The making of a climate skeptic – at University

Foreword by Anthony Watts.This essay is written by a student at the University of Wyoming, who finds herself in the middle of a set of circumstances that are pushing her further into the realm of being a climate skeptic. It is an eye-opening read. I have verified the identity of the student, but per her request (due to the backlash she fears) I am allowing her to write under the pen name of “Clair Masters”

Guest essay by Clair Masters

The class was languid, most kids were on their phones, or surfing Facebook on their laptops. I sat with my notebook open in front of me, empty except for the lecture title at the top of the page. The professor put a slide up on the projector showing a chart relating CO2 and temperature over the course of a few million years, the one we’ve all seen by now. The CO2 curve lags after the Temperature one, and anyone’s first reading of the chart would probably be that temperature is driving the CO2 changes, not the other way around, if there is any trend at all. I perked up slightly, it was new for a professor to show alternate data, and looked around expectantly at other students, waiting for some kind of reaction—confusion, frowns, anything to show they’re seeing something that fights what we’ve been told since elementary school. I saw a few yawns, dull stares, people on their phones, though one loud girl who was a religious global warming fanatic was glaring at the slide, slouching in her seat so her hand could pet her (dubiously trained) service dog.

Besides her, no one cared, and certainly I was the only one who glanced up in surprise when our professor began to talk about the chart as if it didn’t matter, something like “This trend suggests the opposite of what we know to be true” before moving on. I looked down at my notebook—friends and family tell me my face does not hide emotions well, and I didn’t want my professor to know I was annoyed. I don’t know why he even included it in the lecture, but that’s what happens in these courses. It was incredible to me at the time, but my professors would often include evidence contrary to the anthropogenic climate change theory before quickly sweeping it aside with some short remark. It doesn’t matter this data exists, it doesn’t matter that there is debate in the climate science community—not here. This is a University, after all.

College wasn’t when I first started questioning the “acceptable” views of climate change. As far back as middle school I was a tough case for teachers trying to push global warming. It was fashionable back in 2008 to rabidly teach the “polar bears are drowning” narrative after those photographs from 2007 that showed the bear standing on a single hunk of ice. Tragic! A picture like that was all it took to have most of my classmates nodding solemnly along while our teachers taught us about our carbon footprint—about how we were contributing to the plight of the poor polar bears with our gluttonous use of electricity, by our parents having more than one car.

An animal fanatic, I spent hours paging through my Zoobooks and animal encyclopedia collections, reading all about polar bears. A number stood out to me; 60 miles. Polar bears often swim for 60 miles to get from one body of solid ground to the next. Proud of myself, I brought it up to my science teacher, and instead of getting the glowing pat on the head I was used to when I did outside research for classes, I was chastised.

At the time, I thought of myself as a teacher’s pet, the good student, so her tone took me completely by surprise. I wasn’t trying to say global warming wasn’t killing the bears, as far as I knew it was. My teachers told me so, so it must be true. Her denial about the swimming capabilities of the bears is what threw me off, and for the first time I was faced with doubting a teacher. Who do I trust, the books I’ve read or this teacher? Something changed in me around that time, and that seed of doubt she unknowingly planted ended up making me who I am today—a skeptic. Not just for climate change and the like, but for everything. I abruptly stopped believing everything my teachers told me, it was a hard wake up call to the real world as I realized that adults had agendas.

This idea was reinforced when one of the books in a beloved young adult series by James Patterson abandoned the original plot and conflict to go fight against global warming—essentially like rewriting the X-Men as Captain Planet. Horrified and disgusted that the characters would rather go protect those (at this point, goddamn) polar bears than stop the original mad scientist threat, I recognized the real propaganda element of this whole global warming deal. I started fighting back in small ways, mostly in the form of asking questions; “Don’t we breathe out CO2?”, “Warmer weather will help some animals, won’t it?”. I was not popular with my seventh-grade teachers. My friends were oblivious to my small insurrection; I was always the kid who raised her hand in class anyway.

It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I finally got the scientific background to really combat the ideas that were being pushed on me. I took a high level environmental science class that pushed me to dig deep and question what I thought I knew about the way our climate works. I loved that class, and for once I had a teacher who didn’t try to shut me up. She acknowledged and engaged me, didn’t brush away my questions, and every year since my graduation from high school I’ve given a short presentation over Skype to her class about Petroleum engineering, petroleum geology, a little paleontology, and college life.

I distinctly remember two specific moments in that class that were “a-ha” moments for me. The first is when we watched that required documentary: Gasland. Some of the claims made in that documentary were beyond absurd, and like the skeptical jerk I am, I fact checked while watching it in class. On the school-administered iPad, I googled every single thing Josh Fox presented that got my spider-sense tingling. Antelope in Wyoming are going extinct? Not even close. Fracking fluid is in people’s water, letting them light it on fire? Try naturally occurring methane. At this point, I was already toying with the idea of going into some kind of geological science, and I was intrigued by the idea of fracking technology. We did a short lab in that class where we tried to get oil out of sand, and I thought it was cool. It was my love of all fields of science, not to mention the thrill of being involved in such a villainous industry, that helped me decide on Petroleum Engineering.

The other moment was when we were focusing on alternative energy, including a lengthy discussion about Hydrogen powered cars. I raised my hand quickly.

“If we’re worried about CO2 causing global warming, wouldn’t it be much worse if we were all driving cars that had water vapor as their exhaust?”

She paused, thinking it over. “I think you might be right, that’s a very interesting observation.” She said, before re-explaining to the class what I was talking about, how water vapor captures much more heat than carbon dioxide. I felt good about being able to apply what I learned about climate and our atmosphere to challenging popular “green” narratives. The best part was that my teacher was so supportive, and was willing to admit when something our textbook claimed wasn’t entirely true.

It has been a very different ride in college. Exhausting, as now I’m surrounded by professors and students who promote anthropogenic climate change predictions with such intensity, it makes the most zealous cultist fanatics look calm and reasonable. Again and again I’m surprised by the reactions of my peers to my skepticism, sometimes I even prompt truly angry reactions from people. One crunchy granola geology guy engaged me in a conversation about alternative energy, he tried to argue that hemp oil would soon overtake our need for fossil fuels. Right. Somehow the conversation got to land use, and I expressed an opinion that the states probably could deal with their environmental problems and land use better than federal agencies—he quoted something about the Koch Brothers, and I left him for class. Maybe a week later, he handed me a piece of notebook paper with “research” written up on it—mostly a series of bullet points about the American Lands Council which he somehow connected to white supremacy, right wing fanaticism, and most bizarrely of all the Kim Davis controversy. I couldn’t believe that someone who was a “scientific” person felt the need to use the guilt by association trap, the screeching leftist “Racist! Sexist! Homophobe!” nonsense in a discussion about land use. I gave up my favorite study spot after that, opting to avoid him instead of giving him the what-for I’d so like to. I don’t have time for that—I have school to worry about.

There have been plenty of times that I wondered if it’s my perspective that is wrong, I’ve done some soul searching on the topics I’m passionate about. College has challenged my views, while it seems to only confirm the ideas that the “warmists” hold. Some of my previously held beliefs have changed, like much of what I understood (or thought I understood) about climate, but I’ve still yet to be presented solid evidence for primary anthropogenic climate change that isn’t either refuted by another study, or backed with accusations like the ones crunchy granola guy lobbed my way. I’ve stopped being shocked by the way my professors obediently tow the party line—as I learned a few years ago that at least here, federal funding is dependent on a certain amount of global warming acceptance. I’m thankful for the engineering courses I’m taking, because if my geology and earth sciences were not balanced out by the dry technical calculations of engineering, I’d probably lose my mind. (Just imagine how bad it would be if I were in sociology or women’s studies!) I am disappointed by the quality of the “science” taught at University though—when theory is presented as fact, and computer models are regarded as gospel despite their infamous unreliability, it’s not actual science.

It’s propaganda—dogmatic as any religion.

It’s my 5th year since heading west for my engineering degree. This year I’m taking a handful of great little petroleum classes, and finishing off my geology minor. Of course, it’s my geology class that is giving me a headache. A mineral resource course sounds pretty straightforward… except of course our professor managed to turn it into a climate change/ humans are killing everything/ we’re all going to die class. We even have a section of the class towards the end of the semester dedicated to social justice, because that’s why I’m getting a science degree. In retrospect, I should have known what I was getting into when I looked around and saw several students with either half shaved heads or hair colors that in nature scream “I’m toxic”.

401 thoughts on “The making of a climate skeptic – at University”

It is the same in the U.K. We have a “Sustainability” dept. – packed with ecofascists. The problem is, thanks to Government grants it is the most profitable dept. In the University, so untouchable.
I have been formally warned not to attend their seminars.
Why?
I asked awkward questions and presented data that challenged the orthodoxy.

Same here in Auckland, where the NZ Herald persists in printing the most outrageous articles in support of CAGW. Where are all those young ambitious investigative journalists who could make a name for themselves by following up on these distorted “facts”? I suppose that would probably kill off any career prospects, and who would print anything they produced. After all, it’s not the Washington Post of old!

Why would you be surprised? I was raised by Australians who viewed journalists as manipulative gossips that perpetuated the tall poppy syndrome, and who print what they think will sell, what is exciting (to them) and toes to the party line (that they usually learned in some socialist echo-chamber). They would say if you wanted to know what was really going on, and you read the banner articles, you had to read the whole article through to the end and then do follow-up research to verify what was stated, as the headline and first couple of paragraphs almost never reflected what the actual information revealed. Also, when they are caught out, journalists don’t mea culpa but print a retraction deep inside the paper.
Personally I read a lot and find most of the media here in Canada quite one-sided, but at least there is the National Post to offset the Star and Globe (though the Post has been allowing some virtue signalling lately)

The Expulsive,
Readership and subscription to newspapers in the USA has been in decline for a number of years. They aren’t doing themselves, or their bottom line, any favors by displaying an advocacy position. People seem to be increasingly understanding that papers like the NYT, WaPo, and Huffpost can predictably be expected to present the supposed consensus position on virtually all liberal positions. Any thinking person then wonders why there are never any contradictory facts, or even nuances, presented, and asks themselves the obvious, “Is this propaganda?” In the long term, the liberal MSM may end up being their own worst enemy.

Journalists have degrees in Journalism. Not science, engineering, medicine, engineering, business or economics. If push came to shove, a journalist might be qualified to grade english papers in a high school but they are not remotely qualified to write a story outside of their expertise; journalism.

Without having the required background in the subject they are writing about they bring in their biases. When the price of petrol goes up at the pump and they have to fill up their own cars tank, they complain and tell the world that oil companies are evil. They never have the necessary skills to understand why the price of petrol went up. Oil companies become a constant target and are vilified in the press.

The young lady getting her petroleum engineering degree could write a more accurate story about the price of petrol at the pump, but she is not a journalist. Funny that. She is the one qualifed but the journalist will not ask her to explain why the price is going up. Though she is the most qualified.

The journalist will go to the the crackpot eco-fascist, pop smoking, save the polar bear fanatic to get his angle on why petrol prices are going up.

Hi Roger
I see that the speaker at the seminar at the University in Ch.Ch. was none other than Jim Salinger. You know of course that he was part of the’team’ at CRU and gets a mention in ‘Climategate’. Bloody Hell! Nuf sed.

Neo, Post Modernism claims “logic” and “consistency” are “oppressive constructs of the patriarchy”. It will never make sense to objective, rational Modernists. Don’t try to make sense of the insensible. Just make sure the Post Modernists don’t hold power over you.

I was asked by an editor to modify a journal article on how policy preferences distort medical research ethics discuss similar cases in non-medical research. This was around the time of the ClimateGate revelations, and I mentioned, in passing, that the authors were accused of trying to intimidate editors into rejecting work that contradicted their own work or their policy prescriptions. After the paper was published, the Vice Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, at the center of the scandal, wrote the editor and tried to intimidate him into withdrawing the paper for mentioning the accusations – the exact behavior they were accused of.

It is funny how the warmists so violently attack fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas – after all, they are all stored solar energy. It is nature’s gift to humanity and are there for a purpose – for us to use.

“I have been formally warned not to attend their seminars.
Why?
I asked awkward questions and presented data that challenged the orthodoxy.”

I have a neighbor like that. Whenever he contributes to a conversation about anything important, he immediately intrudes ‘facts’ that nobody else can counter because they’re so off the planet. His wife shuts him off completely when he broaches such stuff – telling him to save it for the pub. We only allow him the occasional venting there. When he’s not there, we can discuss interesting stuff, when he is there, we just talk sport.
He’s a pain – but he thinks he’s a philosopher.

I completed my Geology degree in 1989 just as “global warming” took off. Most of the lecturers/students probably realized like me that it was a complete load of bollocks but some of them jumped on the gravy train and are now part of the climate establishment.

Jimmy,
I completed my geology degree a few years before you and I’m delighted to say that the few that I am still in touch with from that degree are as deeply skeptical as I am. It’s a no-brainer really – geologists have no excuse for not knowing that the climate has always changed and always will – it’s perfectly natural. The only person from my era in that college who I know is not a skeptic is the embarrassing Naomi Oreskes. We never got on and I am damn sure we wouldn’t now!

I was a decade earlier (1980) and my current skepticism is firmly grounded in what I learned in my geology and other Earth Science courses at Southern Connecticut State University (“that fine oil school”/sarc). Don Easterbrook was the author of my geomorphology text book and Reid Bryson the lead author of my physical geography text book. The greenhouse effect managed, at best, half-a-dozen references in all of my combined text books and as of the mid 1970’s, the Earth was not doing anything it hadn’t already been doing throughout the Holocene.

I haven’t visited my alma mater since 1989… I would bet the Earth Science department has changed a bit (deviated from reality) over the past 28 years.

David, My son graduated form Penn State 5 years ago with a Petroleum Engineering degree. He spent the first 2 years at the Scranton campus and as that campus did not have some of the courses he needed, 3 years at State College.After his first year and a 4.0 average, he was given a 30K, 4 year free ride.He and a friend rented a house at both locations which let them isolate themselves for the zoo. Four months after leaving school, he got a job in The Woodlands with a very good medium sized service company. After 8 months they kicked him up a notch or 2 and he is now in Midland. He gets tom see all aspects of E&P. I would think that after the magic 5 year mark, he may want to move on. He is bright, well spoken and good looking. I believe the interview process would be easy for him. He has an advantage over others as he can think outside the box. There are 2 mid-sized E&P companies we both like.One company is Dallas based. I figure a good plan over the next 9- 12 months will be of great help. So I appeal to your good nature and ask if you would be free for some advise . That could be voice or face time. If you agree, I ask the mods to give you my email address so we could set something up. He has no idea I am doing this. Thanks.

David,
And I lead you by about a decade. It has long been my impression that geoscientists are among the best represented in the skeptic camp. However, I have no studies to cite to back that up. On the other hand, I have found that among some of the younger geologists, some of whom could have been my former students, there are some radical alarmists. Once indoctrinated, it takes an exceptional individual to break free from what they have ‘learned.’

In the 2008 Doran-Zimmerman survey, whence came the “97%” mantra, based upon 79 cherry-picked “actively publishing climate scientists” out of over 3000 respondents (all in government or academe, not the private sector), the group with the lowest rate of answering both questions “Yes”, was “economic geologists”, at 47%.

The first question was, “Has it warmed since c. AD 1850?”, and the second, “If so, is human activity significantly to blame for this warming?”

Clyde, and I lead your graduation by another decade or more and I agree that the few contacts remaining among my former classmates are, to a person, skeptical of the the cliSci orthodoxy. Not only geologists, though. Learning was dominantly apolitical. This was even before social sciences got corrupted into worthlessness (‘the plight of the poor is to be laid at the feet of capitalist – free enterprise…’ and that sort of thing).

Interesting date 1989. The beginning of the end of the USSR and the Cold War. Also the fear arose in the world of climate science that the government money dumped into the system since WWII was going to dry up or at least be dramatically reduced. The UK and the USA spent ever more money from WWII until 1990 on climate, oceanographic and weather science because of its strategic importance, most especially when nuclear submarines became one leg of our nuclear triad. To hide a nuclear sub you must understand the thermal structure of the world’s oceans.

Our elder son when about 3/4 years old would ask why when told anything and then ask why again when given an answer this could get a bit wearing after a time but did mean he grew up questioning things that were presented as facts. My mother in law gave him an encyclopedia for his 7th birthday which he read cover to cover and then asked his mum and I many and various questions not always giving us a context for the question which brought about many chances for what some call teaching moments!

I was one of those critical thinking kids back in the day of global cooling. Although my grade school science didn’t bring it up, it was still a big enough fad that one of my classmates did in a discussion among just us, and when asked if I feared the advancement of ice sheets all the way down to where we lived in the southwest, I said I wasn’t worried because I was pretty sure I could outrun a glacier.

I respectfully disagree. Claire is describing the journey not merely justifying the destination. The world is full of process oriented and results oriented thinkers. It takes a greater effort to carry both along through a story.

I agree. For the past 20 years I have lived in a state university town, for the past 30 years had to deal with the “science” departments of most of our state’s universities private and public. The Claires of the world are a rare and possibly endangered species. Three Christmas ago at a party I was debating a far left guy about a lot of different issue, global warming came up. The guy’s two college age kids were also there listening. When they began to ask me questions the guy went nuts, yelled at them, took them and left. Of course it was all my fault.

Proper science:
Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation but as a question.
[A caution he gives his students, to be wary of dogmatism.]
— Niels Bohr
In Bill Becker, ‘Pioneer of the Atom’, New York Times Sunday Magazine (20 Oct 1957)

Not so good science:
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, all polar bears will die, water vapour condenses.

“Richard Feynman said that any theory that had no potential way of being disproved was religion and not science.”

That’s the sort of unquestioned dogma I was exposed to back in the day . . though I could only barely sense something was very wrong with it, and a wide array of other dogmatic concepts being pawned off as great unquestionable truths.

Religion does not mean stuff that has no way of being disproved, obviously, I now can see, and a great many things in a great many religions have been “disproved”. So, what exactly was he on about ? . . one asks in a place where questioning him and his iconic remark is verboten, as questioning the CAGW theory is now at school . .

It didn’t start with “climate change”, this cult like form of “straw-man” defeating science, I am convinced. It started with Evolution (in the grand origins story sense), and I suspect that’s what Mr. Feynman was really on about . . blabbering nonsense in a poorly perceived battle with a poorly perceived opponent . .

Having to read and pass exams on subjects that include lot of stuff you know is plainly wrong is good for your intellectual development.
As an engineering undergraduate I had exams in Marxist-Leninist philosophy, socialism and economy, practical military training (with the theory of political indoctrination) etc. For the most of the students it was counter-productive, but passing the exams was imperative.

I would not recommend that. You have probably already given enough info to identify yourself and in view of the mindset of you professors you may put your degree in jeopardy. At least wait until you have graduated. ;)

Good luck with course. I was always the one asking difficult questions in my courses and being questioning definitely is the key to understanding. Some just lean to parrot the right stuff since that is all you need to get the piece of paper and go for a job.

If you want to understand you need to question everything. Realising the enormous amount of garbage that highschool teachers come out with was a shock to me too.

There is hardly anything the warmunists can do to prevent her graduating with even a Masters if Claire were so inclined. If she were working on PhD I might agree that a little more caution would be in order. I for one an cheered by her fearlessness. You go, girl!

@Alex;
I’m not sure of your point. Clair is following an engineering track and it’s tough for someone to muck about with those course grades, although I take your point for any humanities electives. You don’t need to graduate with Honors to land a good job. I was a ChemE and managed only a solid C. I still wound up with one of the top 5 job offers, salary-wise. More important was that I had a summer job with the company that made that offer and they apparently liked what they saw.

It can be worse than that. I was once flunked on a sophomore physics exam because I didn’t work one of 10 problems the way it had been worked in the text book the professor had memorized but I got the correct answer. It took me half a class to prove his text book wrong but he still wouldn’t change the grade. I finally just walked out of class after telling him to stuff his exam where the sun don’t shine. Took me two more semesters before I could repeat the course under a different professor. But, you are right. It probably would have been better just to accept the grade and keep quiet. Since then I have never been able to tolerate incompetence.

Joe Crawford,
I had a similar experience in a geophysics class where the professor requested that we “give a proof” on a midterm. I provided an alternative to the derivation he had demonstrated on the chalkboard and he didn’t even give me partial credit because it wasn’t the one he wanted. We had a ‘discussion’ about it and after that I wouldn’t say hello or even acknowledge him when I saw him in the halls. His guilt apparently got the better of him eventually because, when I graduated, he volunteered to be a reference for me.

Reminds me of the time way back in 1952 when the professor was putting a derivation of a thermodynamic equation on the board. About fifteen steps, as I recall. In the third step, I noticed that the last quantity should have had a minus sign instead of a plus, and called that to his attention.

He responded, without turning his head (he knew me well): “My wife was right four times before breakfast. This time I am going to be right. Leave it as is.” (But I was right!)

I’m so impressed by you. Smart, dilligent and honest, there aren’t many like you about and it will make life tough. Stick with engineers. Most I meet are climate sceptics and those that aren’t are sceptical of renewables. We’re a nice bunch.

The irony is if those that fully support CAGW weren’t so vehement in rejecting inconvenient facts, many of us wouldn’t be sceptics. On paper I’m a luke warmer but I have no problem with being called the D word because I deny all sorts of things, specifically I deny them the right to ignore those inconvenient realities. I deny them the insanity that tells us renewables can supply our societies the energy we need to subsist, let alone flourish. I deny the right to do my thinking for me. It sounds like you feel the same way :-)

I’m reading Atlas Shrugged at the moment. I never got round to reading it having read other books like 1984 and Brave New World. It is amazing how relevant the ideas in that book are, even with it being a more idealistic and romantic novel.

But most people understand why: Cultural Marxism.

We are living in the time of the Theorists with no grounding in reality. Yet they still want their cars and food to be safe. If only we could harness the power of Cognitive Dissonance.

@Griff: You have your understanding of what is going on in climate science horribly and ignorantly bass ackwards. it isn’t the skeptics with the belief system, it is the alarmists.

With their CAGW belief system, the alarmists are the clerics, the clergy. Skeptics are applying science to the alarmists belief system with their questions and refuting evidence. The job of the skeptics is to determine the robustness of the CAGW theory, and they are finding it wanting.

You are in dire need of reading a good book that talks about how scientific discourse is supposed to work. You also are in dire need of understanding how science has a long history of being quite fallible and getting things wrong, as they initially did with the status of the (now dwarf planet) Pluto decades ago. Your ignorance is an abomination at a science website like this one.

Richard111: Let me tell you how, and I am probably a class 1 denier. Gas molecules are agitated by an input of energy, as in sunlight of certain frequencies. They stay agitated, thus trapping the heat. That is why the earth is warm and Mars (with a very thin atmosphere) is not.

It has been my experience that, at places like The Conversation, it is the ‘true believers’ that routinely engage in ad hominem attacks rather than refute my claims. Just who are the ‘bishops?’

I strongly disagree with your implication that skeptics are anti-science. The very essence of the Scientific Method is to consider alternative working hypotheses, question claims, attempt to replicate experiments, and even to continue to do so for a hundred years, as is the case with Einstein’s work. Those who are not inherently skeptics are not truly scientists; they are little better than technicians who have accumulated some area-specific knowledge, and defend it against all heretics.

Richard111: Let me tell you how, and I am probably a class 1 denier. Gas molecules are agitated by an input of energy, as in sunlight of certain frequencies. They stay agitated, thus trapping the heat. That is why the earth is warm and Mars (with a very thin atmosphere) is not.”

I wonder why people say the silly things like what Texas man writes.

He think CO2 “traps heat”,when actually the CO2 molecule only absorbs and emit light, not heat. The earth is warm because of the OCEANS/Solar/Clouds effect. CO2 comes in way down the list of postulated warm forcing effect.

SST, texasjimbrock’s first statement is quite correct. CO2 gas molecules can absorb certain frequencies of sunlight and become more agitated. Problem is the agitated molecules now smack into adjacent air molecules and increase their kinetic energy. These collisions cause molecules to move apart slightly, they have been warmed, and that little volume of warm molecules starts to rise. The sunlight energy, photons, have warmed up a bit of the air but that sunlight never reached the ground. Thanks to the CO2 molecules absorbing some sunlight the ground beneath doesn’t get as hot as it could. No trapped heat there.
I’m keeping my mitre.

Actually there probably never were any real communists in the Soviet Union. If you want to find real communists you need to look in hippie communes in California or kibbutzes in Israel, where the concept of communal possession of everything was the rule. “From each according to their capabilities, to each according to their needs”. The Soviet Union was simply a massively centralized state where a relatively few bureaucrats and security types lorded it over everyone else. Whatever kind of political philosophy this might have been, communism it was not.

Roger might be right when he says there were no real communists in the Soviet Union but he should not confuse the stages of socialism and communism. The CPSU never claimed to have achieved communism. It only ever talked about building towards it.

I just finished reading Robert Gellately’s “Stalin’s Curse.” That book, and others, make it very clear that the people who founded and ran the Soviet Union were Communists through-and-through. They believed and developed the theory, and they applied it as hard as they could do.

Communism is an abject failure. It’s a utopian fantasy that foundered on the rocks of economic reality and the reef of human nature.

There are die-hard people who say Communism has never been tried. They are just sure that if they could only get the chance, they’d make it work this next time. These people are delusionals who are unable and unwilling to learn from history.

Communism has been tried, and tried many times. It has failed every single time, always bringing its widespread poverty, its mass murders, its ruined lives, its political prisons, its show trials and its thought crimes.

Communism is by far, by far, the worst political/economic/social system ever invented.

I’m not sure about the kibbutzes in Israel but as far as I know most, if not all of the communes in California and elsewhere eventually failed. Pure communism just will not work because, as Pat Frank says above: “It’s a utopian fantasy that foundered on the rocks of economic reality and the reef of human nature.”

If we only could redo communism with real communists so we could progress on the inevident path to socialism and environmental protection by fighting social injustice and gender gap debilitating average lifetime of third and fourth sex.

It is one of the greatest ironies in history that just as the political left, in all its forms, have committed to man made global warming, is the same moment that the sun enters a spectacular cooling phase that is producing record low temperatures all over the planet.
And this is just the beginning.
There has been a group of perfectly respectable, highly competent scientist who have for some years warned of the coming cold. The MSM ignore them, the alarmists rubbish them.

But in the end none of this matters. Nothing will stop what is going to develop in the next 10 years or so. No graphs. No adjusted temperatures, No media propaganda. No dumb Al Gore movies. We are going into a new Maunder Minimum or perhaps worse, and the consequences will be immeasurable. The destruction of crops is already happening in all parts of the planet which I had not expect to happen for some years.

You need to become an expert on what foods last the longest and you don’t have a lot of time. Storing food will do you no harm, nor will joining your local gun club.

I am not of the Left or Right – I prefer being Correct, which tends to preclude membership in any camp.

I am not as pessimistic as Chris Norman but I am also concerned about imminent natural global cooling, which I (we) first predicted in writing in an article published in 2002. I then that wrote that (moderate) global cooling would commence by 2020-2030, and now think it will commence sooner, by ~2020 or even 2017. I’m expecting more of a Dalton Minimum than a Maunder – we will see.

I am concerned that the electrical systems in the Western world have been compromised by foolish grid-connected wind and solar power generation systems that drive up costs and reduce grid reliability. If global cooling coincides with compromised electrical systems, our politicians may have brewed the “perfect storm”.

Regarding food shortages, it may be possible to re-allocate the huge USA corn ethanol crop to food use, although this may take time. The excess drawdown of the Ogalalla Aquifer is also a concern for long-term food production. Further re-allocation of other biofuel cropland in the tropics to food production will take even longer.

These are real environmental issues, not the scary fairy tales of global warming fanatics.

The radical-left greens have taken over the environmental movement and have clearly done far more harm than good to the environment, and to societies all over the world.

The only remaining question is whether this was their intention all along – that is, to cull the human species – or whether this was the result of their naive reliance on cargo cult science. In other words, are the leaders of the global warming alarmist movement scoundrels, or are they imbeciles

Hello Allan Macrae.
My name is not Michael but as I’m semi-psudonymous it is good that that’s not known. Contracts are harder to come by for climate sceptics.

Politically, one’s views may be more correct on the left or on the right but they won’t affect the climate – unless you’re very theocratic and fortuitously correct.

Seriously, the Green agenda has been damaging to the Left and the global poor. As has Identity Politics been damaging to equality and the Left.
It seems unlikely that anyone has planned these outcomes. And if the unlikely were true, I would suspect the security services trying to fight the Cold War by infiltration.

You are clearly right that Cold is more risky than Warmth. Our policies should reflect that.
But to be so confident that Cold will occur is foolish in the extreme. We should prepare to adapt for all outcomes.

the most likely reason for Germany’s grid reliability is the preponderance of underground lines in the distribution networks. Over 80 percent of Germany’s low-voltage lines and over 90 percent of its medium-voltage lines are underground. Other European countries scoring high on SAIDI have similar preponderance of underground distribution, including Denmark, Switzerland and the Netherlands, according to a December 2013 reliability assessment from the Brussels-based Council of European Energy Regulators.

For Germany to maintain its reliability, it may ultimately need a lot more lines. A December 2012 study by the Berlin-based German Energy Agency or DENA found that continued growth in renewables would require 135,000-193,000 kilometers of new lines by 2030, and the upgrading of another 21,000-25,000 km. Stephan Kohler, DENA’s CEO, raised doubts that distributors could handle that €27.5-42.5 billion investment, despite financing mechanisms provided by the Bundesnetzagentur to spur investment: “The Federal Network Agency legally mandated an attractive profit. However, our study reveals that in practice the profits from increasing integration of renewable energy systems … are not adequate for the distribution grid operators to survive.”

So apparently, it’s the buried power lines that are responsible for the grid reliability (which makes sense) and not anything to do with the percentage of renewables on the grid. Germany also has some of the highest energy prices among developed nations, paying approximately 67% more per kilowatt-hour than the US.

Griff, what your linked advert for solar actually highlights, is Germany’s use of more reliable underground grid transmission systems. That is nothing to do with reliability of the generators. The advert also stops short of mentioning that Germany is fortunate to sit at the center of a larger European grid which adds security of supply from other countries.

What Germany is really doing is exporting the unreliability of wind and solar. Some of those countries are now taking steps to limit the harm Germany can cause to their grids in this manner. Germany is also reaching the limit of the amount of wind and solar that can safely be foisted upon traditional generators, who still remain the ultimate guarantors of supply when the wind doesn’t blow and at night. That is why new coal generating plants are being built in Germany and their CO2 emissions are not changing much.The grand scheme has nearly run it’s course. The free money and laws supporting growth of the unreliables industry are no longer enough, and the recipients are worried that the gravy train is running into the sand.

One constant with Griff, he never tires of repeating old lies.
The only reason why Germany’s grid is stable is because it’s part of the larger European grid.
Trying to pretend that Germany has an isolated, independent grid is what liars do.

Germany also relies on it’s neighbors to soak up it’s excess solar power as well as provide for the shortfalls when there is not enough solar generation (like in the evenings when demand is high, but solar produces almost no power).

One common definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. On the other hand, it may just be a learning disability.

In your case, I have seen time after time when you state, or post a link to, something that comes right out of the secret Saturday morning liberal catechism classes, and you receive several replies demonstrating why you are wrong. However, you continue to post such poorly supported claims without even showing the slightest embarrassment or apologizing (Susan Crockford?)! To what do YOU attribute your behavior?

On the other hand, upping the renewables percentage to 35% didn’t alter that reliability, did it?

And I repeat, because you don’t seem very good at reading, whatever the real percentage achieved on certain optimal days by so called “renewables”, it is not them that is tasked with ensuring security of supply. That burden falls on fossil-fueled and nuclear generators, plus other nations that use those technologies for secure generation capacity.

There is a very, very, basic problem of insecure supply with “renewables”. There is still currently still no escape from this problem, whatever is claimed.

ALLAN MACRAE, Yes I am Richard S Courtney’s son. He is very ill at the moment. He has the sort of cancer that they give chemo for but don’t expect remission.
It’s spread to the bones and he has other complications. Email and internet are not things he can concentrate on because of the pain relief.
But he’s still around.

Sorry, any decline in agricultural yields will of course be blamed on “global warming” with shrieks of “we told you so” even if summer sea ice starts to disrupt Atlantic shipping around the same time. As Clive James recently warned us, this is the “theory that no fact doesn’t fit”, i.e. unscientific dogma.

Given the continuing low levels of arctic sea ice – even this year, with a cold central arctic – it is not at all likely that Atlantic shipping is going to find it a problem… unless I suppose even more of the thinning ice gets exported.

The Russian Northern Sea route is now open for longer than ever before (even without the new ice breakers to extend its use beyond the summer)

Griff: Just can’t imagine the sea ice thinning is no big deal, can you? Just can’t imagine it melted in the past and not everything on the planet died. Even if presented with hard evidence, I seriously doubt you’d pay any attention to facts. You have incredible faith, just not facts.

@Griff:
Another fact about German electricity is that the installed capacity of renewables is at nearly 100% of peak electricity demand yet those renewables provide only 35% of the total energy consumed. In addition, in some weeks as little as about 5% of total electricity comes from those renewables (see energy market statistics by the Fraunhofer Institute). So, while you are correct that a certain amount of renewable energy does not necessarily make for an unreliable grid, it makes for an expensive one. As others have stated, the job of ensuring reliability falls on nuclear or fossil-fueled generators, not on the renewables, which tend to pirate the revenues of those reliable generators. Add in the more expensive transmission required because wind energy is often found far from where we like to live, and the cost of renewables is staggering. Purveyors of green energy generally ignore all green-energy costs beyond the plant gate.

1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record. [published on icecap.us in January 2008]

2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.

3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.

4. CO2 is the feedstock for carbon-based life on Earth, and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient. CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.

5. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.

6. Recent global warming was natural and irregularly cyclical – the next climate phase following the ~20 year pause will probably be global cooling, starting by ~2020 or sooner.

7. Adaptation is clearly the best approach to deal with the moderate global warming and cooling experienced in recent centuries.

8. Cool and cold weather kills many more people than warm or hot weather, even in warm climates. There are about 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths every year in the USA and about 10,000 in Canada.

10. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society. When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.

But any deaths during heat waves are due to AGW?
You are so full of shite it is a wonder you Have any brain at all to run your autonomic system.
Actually you sound as thoughtless and shallow as the ignorant fanatics the author of this essay is surrounded by.

A leading English doctor (who could only say this to a newspaper after he retired), stated that at best, flu vaccines have a 1% effectiveness rate.
I can’t remember his name, but he was adamant about it.

A long running experiment a relative and I have been conducting concerning flu vaccines: (she believes dearly in them) For the last 10 years, I have refused to get any flu vaccines. I have gotten the flu in two of those years, 8 years I have not.

She has gotten the flu vaccine every year. 7 years she had no flu, 3 years she got the flu within a week of taking the vaccine. (it certainly appears as if the vaccine gave her the flu) She still believes that the vaccine “protected” her in those 7 good years. I believe that wearing a clove or two of garlic on a necklace would have done the same thing (ie nothing at all) and that when you only have a 20% chance of contracting the illness, getting it 30% of the time is a problem.

My personal opinion is at best the vaccine is a placebo concocted to allow drug manufacturers to rake in huge government sanctioned profits for doing nothing, and at worst it is a catastrophic bit of malpractice that actually kills more old people than it protects.

You are totally ridiculous and a perfect example of a fake person. Cold is far more dangerous than heat for life in general, every warming period has come with expansion of civilization and population growth, heck civilization only exists because we are in the midst of a brief warming period. Or said so you can understand, Warm good, Cold bad.

Grant: Perhaps some years that’s true. It’s a shot in the dark when formulating flu shots. Hit the correct strains, high success. Have one new strain show up and spread, low success. Vaccines are not 100% effective—some of the latest ones are around 60% or aimed at a very specific group. That’s not to say they are worthless. Some are very effective, some are not.

Are you suggesting that Summer is the flu season? /sarc Whether it is cold itself, or things that come about as a result of the cold — such as carbon monoxide poisoning, road accidents attributable to ice, or seasonal illnesses — clearly, cold weather is directly and indirectly responsible for more excess deaths than the opposite weather. You are very good at using sophistries and straw men to try to appear to be right. You have no shame! If you aren’t already a lawyer, you might want to consider a career change.

The data has proven time and time again that cold kills. Heat does not kill, it advances the death of people who are dying anyway. The stats show an increase in deaths during a heat wave but then a drop afterwards below the average rate, before it returns to average.

Point 8 is correct, based on the evidence. The causes for Excess Winter Mortality are many, and include seasonal influenza, high energy costs, and poor adaptation to winter climates.

The Excess Winter Mortality Rate in the United Kingdom is much higher than that in Canada. We have similar populations and similar health care systems. Canada tends to be colder but mostly drier than the UK. However, Canada generally has much lower energy costs and better-insulated housing and probably better central heating, on average. This suggest that adaptation to winter and low energy costs are significant drivers of lower Winter Mortality rates.

Even in warmer climates, Excess Winter Mortality rates are often higher than in Canada. Again, high energy costs and poorer quality housing appear to be key factors.

Cheap, abundant reliable energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple.

When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die.

I wrote “We (Canada and Britain) have similar populations and similar health care systems.”

I mean similar populations genetically. Canada has a population of about 35 million and Britain about 65 million, but Excess Winter Mortality in Canada is about 5000 to 10,000 per year, and in Britain it is 25,000 to 50,000 per year.

Imagine IF Britain had competent politicians in the past several decades instead of warmist imbeciles. Instead of spending billions on green energy debacles, they could have spent the funds on improving home insulation and central heating, and encouraged fracking of shales to reduce natural gas prices., and a whole lot of grannies and grandpa’s would still be alive for their grandchildren.

Hi Alan, ‘Coles’ Notes, preferably written as Cole’s Notes. Beside the some odd subjects as engineering undergrad (see my comment above), I did Latin at the grammar school. One of the pupils wrote ‘coles’ on the black board and left it there, a minute later teacher came in, upon seeing the word she went nuts (pardon the pun), of course we had to find out what it meant.
I see Aussies have Coles chain of supermarkets, which made me chuckle, no further comment.

Coles Notes (in the USA Cliff’s Notes) were an alternative to actually reading the books on the subject. Teachers hated them and students valued them – as a wonderful time-saver. Pre-internet, these books enjoyed a lively second-hand trade, as tattered copies were passed down from generation to generation. With the right Coles booklet, you could bang off a credible book report in an hour or so, rather than slogging through the actual text for days.

I actually enjoyed reading as a kid, and still collect books, but Coles was invaluable when faced with an incredibly boring and over-rated reading assignment.

Coles Notes are student guides to literature, published in Canada. The Coles bookstore first published Coles Notes in 1948. The first title published was on the French novella Colomba by Prosper Mérimée.

In 1958, Jack Cole and Carl Cole, founders of Coles, sold the U.S. rights to Coles Notes to Cliff Hillegass who then published the books under CliffsNotes.

By 1960, Coles notes sales had peaked. They had over 120 titles, mostly on English novels; however, they covered other subjects including math, science and foreign languages. Coles Notes is currently owned by Indigo Books in Canada.

Well said Clair
Test ALL things
Uphold the high standard of scientific integrity laid out by Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman in his commencement address “Cargo Cult Science” to Caltech 1974 http://bit.ly/2eO5JKO

In a way it is disconcerting to read this. As a geology graduate from 30 or so years ago, it troubles me to read that the earth sciences department at her university are so rife with alarmist tripe. It used to be that engineering and geology were the two reliably skeptical science departments. Now, of course, the earth sciences have been overwhelmed by the environmental “sciences”, and with their attendant SJW mindsets. It truly is about grant money. But for young Clair Masters I would say: Don’t turn back, your future is assured because so many others have turned their backs on reality and embraced the propaganda. Your expertise will be needed in the coming years.

When an intelligent – a truly intelligent – person sees people who appear to be intelligent, it is tempting to believe that they are.,

You are, after all at a university, maybe an extremely prestigious one. You feel that people are there because they are damned smart.

Until something happens and you catch someone – a fellow student or a lecturer perhaps – laying down ‘facts’ instead of showing you how to think.

And you realise that the world and university in particular is full of second and third rate minds, and the way those minds work is to absorb the received wisdom of people whom they consider, or whom they are told are, better minds than they are, and then seek to assert their status by an obscene process of regurgitation.

You may use a handy tool to spot these people. When they say ‘I think…’ it becomes clear that in fact that haven’t. The have heard, they have read, they have seen it in TV, but what they haven’t done is thought, and certainly not from first principles.

In the intelligence stakes these people are frauds. And they know it. Deep down they know that despite being professors or having degrees, they are not first rate minds. And this fundamental insecurity means they are suckers for consensus. As well as academic bovine excrement.* They dont have the courage to dissent. They teach what is perceived to be the received wisdom of the day, and they regurgitate what they have been taught.

*For those who enjoy philosophy and good BS, here is an extract from Roger Scruton’s – known as a ‘philosopher of the right’ – book on the New Left philosophers (Fools Frauds and Firebrands). Those are the people who more or less wrote the bible of political correctness. It’s just one instance at random, but it shows the magnificent outpourings of total excrement of which the New Left mind is capable. This is a critique of Althusser…

…”But by admitting that political transformations have political causes (‘relative autonomy’) and that economic structures may be generated by political choice (‘reciprocal action’) he allows human thought and intention to be prime causes of historical change. In which case, what remains of historical materialism?”

[what Scruton is doing here is examining a core inconsistency of Marxist thought, which seeks first to establish that we are all defined by material reality, and then propose a solution in which individual free choices by men not so bound, works.]

“Only a strong dose of scientific method could rescue Althusser from this impasse, but nothing in his writings suggests he has ever seriously considered what scientific method consists in”

[And I think here Roger senses a key point, that the rigours and disciplines of the scientific method are all that prevents it from becoming mere intellectual flatulence, the postulating of hypotheses with no limits placed upon the nonsense that may result]

“Rather than examine just what ‘determination of the last instance’ might mean, Althusser prefers to wrap the phrase in nonsense, thereby shielding it from interrogation. This habit was inherited by his most famous student Alain Badiou, ….Here is Badiou’s way of contributing to the debate concerning ‘determination in the last instance’.

‘If no instance can determine the whole it is by contrast possible that a practice, thought in the structure that is proper to it, which is thus a structure that is so to speak dislocated (décalée) with regard to the one that articulates this practice as an instance of the whole, plays the determining rôle with regard to a whole in which it figures in a decentered manner'”

Scruton admits total defeat in attempting to find any meaning in the above, and that is his point, and mine too.

Second and third rate minds are vulnerable to the ‘Emperors New Clothes’ syndrome. Unable to think and especially unable to go back to first principles, and desperately insecure, they cannot admit that a load of unadulterated wombat turds like the above is what it is. Pompous pseudo-intellectual nonsense. Since they can’t understand it (who can?) and they can’t admit that they can’t understand it, they are forced to go along with its conclusions!

And that is how almost intelligent people are more stupid that your average barely educated blue collar worker, who if he could read that at all, would instantly spot that it was beautifully crafted nonsense of the first order.

The New Left is in fact all Emperor New Clothes, and Climate change is perhaps its underpants. People believe in it because it makes them look smarter than they are, and people see through it because they actually are smarter than they thought they were.

And the natural allies of the really smart are not the over educated urban ‘liberals’ but the blue collar workers, who respect education and intelligence but have no time for BS.

Had an argument in the common room today. I’m the only one who has troubled to read any IPCC report. I’m the only one who has actually read the code of any GCM (I have two on the laptop I’m typing this on and a third on my desktop). To the best of my knowledge I’m the only one who knows what an autoregressive time series is and why it matters that climate records are autoregressive. I’m the only one who knew that the ice was increasing around the Antarctic. I’m the only one who has actually read any of the climate science papers. I’m the only one who has actually bothered to analyse any climate data myself. But apparently *I* am the science denier for not believing in the consensus because it’s a consensus (and I am an ignoramus for thinking that science is supposed to be based on data, not consensus). A mad world, my masters.

One of the comments that I get in such conversations is that since I only have a BS, and that in engineering with a focus on Electromagnetics, I am not qualified to have an opinion on Climate Science. The logic is that only the high priests of science, the experts in any particular subject, can speak, and the rest of us must take their statements as holy writ. This is insane to me.

I got mobbed by misanthropes on a game I play (Clash of Clans) spouting every MSM talking point.

No one knew who Michael Man was, what IPCC was, what the EM spectrum CO2 absorbs, didn’t know Harvey was the first Cat 3+ in 12 years to landfall on the U.S. (someone “argued” a Cat5 hit last year), nor that corals bleaching was due to pollution & sea level falling, what land subsidence was…

I know. I try to refrain from posting about climate science on Facebook, but sometimes my darker angels lure me in. The last time, I posted this:

Please answer these three questions if you wish to debate climate science:
1. What are the data sources that measure global temperature? How many are there, and where are they situated? How many independent data sets are there that measure global temperature?

2. How often have these data sets been revised, modified, or cleansed, and by whom?

3. What is the net effect of these revisions/modifications/cleansing?

I’ve never found any takers, but I do get a lot of hot air and bluster. I finally had to say to the last guy, “If you aren’t willing to answer those questions, you’re accepting dogma on faith. Have a great time at church, and say a prayer for me please!”

I’m an engineer by training, a coder by profession (early in my career) and a technology researcher today. My grasp of statistics is rusty but serviceable, and I’ve read the ClimateGate files. Why does all this invalidate my skepticism?

A superb critique of where it all goes wrong in the educational world, and why the more people you send to university, the more collectively idiotic they appear to become.

The truth of your final paragraph has been amply demonstrated by the current divide in the UK between those who voted to Leave the European Union – a mix of those who are truly bright and do their own research, and the blue collar working class – and the diminishing number of brainwashed idealist Leftists who want to Remain in the EU. They are terrified of stepping out of line, not understanding how Establishment and unthinking they have become.

In Chapter XVIII of “The Prince” Niccolò Machiavelli wrote “Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, too few to come in touch with you. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.

Some would summarize this comment as “The ends justify the means.” the holy mantra of the New Left. The New Left have no interest in debate or reason. Discussion of issues is a complete waste of time. The New Left must be removed from power through the electoral process and left to wither on the vine. To achieve this result requires unrelenting efforts to overcome the current moral vacuum of the mass media.

A mineral resource course sounds pretty straightforward… except of course our professor managed to turn it into a climate change/ humans are killing everything/ we’re all going to die class. We even have a section of the class towards the end of the semester dedicated to social justice, because that’s why I’m getting a science degree.

If it’s not too late to do so without penalty, drop the class. There’s too much danger that you will ‘get across’ the teacher and get a crappy mark. If you want to go on to higher degrees, that can matter a lot.

Social justice is another meaningless term invented by the Left to capture the moral high ground.

I have never met a lefty who can tell me what it actually means.

But all agree its terribly important and if we don’t frame our whole lives by its precepts, we are beyond the moral pale.

Wiki:

Social justice is the concept of fair and just relation between the individual and society. This is measured by the explicit and tacit terms for the distribution of wealth, opportunities for personal activity and social privileges.

Meaningless twaddle. What is ‘just and fair’? What is ‘society’ . What are ‘explicit and tacit terms for the distribution of wealth’ and WTF is a ‘social privilege’?

We are all born different, and unequal. Some by sheer happenstance manage to remain ignorant and blissful and confront death in the sure end certain knowledge of a resurrection, others by sheer happenstance live miserable lives handicapped by diseases, psychological baggage from childhood or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We don’t have the power to change that. If we try by bureaucratic means we end up with a set of rules ripe for exploitation by those who will – as the 3rd world beggar who cuts his legs off – manage to define themselves as victims in terms of those rules.

For every idealistic projection of what and how we think things ought, or should be – and that very term implies a debt – we can see that the very means by which it is supposed it might be achieved, are self contradictory.

Every piece of positive discrimination is simply discrimination in its own right. We have Black Lawyers associations, Black Police associations that are inherently and deeply racist to their cores. What we find is that as soon as we view the world in terms of ‘social justice’, we are creating the view that leads to creating social injustice. The favouring of one group over another in an attempt to achieve an idealistic equality that is only in the mind of the Marxist, never in the real world.

And that is the game. To justify the abstraction of wealth from those who create it, on the excuse that it will be given to those who ‘through no fault of their own’ do not have it, by a bunch of people who extract something like a 40% commission for doing it. Which they trouser.

And of course what is ‘fair and equal’ is what they also define. Socialism is institutionalised racketeering.
And ‘social justice’ is an effective a weapon of extortion as a Thomson sub machine gun.

I’m on all sides of this at the same time … somewhere between Tommy Douglas and Ron Paul. :-)

The thing that disturbs me is that there is way too much talk about privilege and victimhood, and way too little about hard work and initiative. Thomas Sowell points out that we no longer celebrate people who overcome adversity to make something of themselves. link It’s bad in so many ways.

The EPA adopted the wholly meaningless “climate justice” meme under Obama-era administrators and used it to spend millions of dollars paying off friendly special interests that had nothing to do with the EPA’s core mission.
Fortunately it is now being dismantled under Scott Pruitt for the rubbish that it is.

I despise Wikipedia. I routinely audit articles. Every-single-one has missing citations, erroneous citations (Huff post is not a science journal ffs), or statements made not even found in the citations!

““This trend suggests the opposite of what we know to be true” before moving on. ”

No, the trend shows exactly what is predicted. The climate warms when the forcings increase.
If the forcings are solar, then after the planet warms the oceans will outgas c02, which will increase the warming.

yes, increased C02 is both a Cause of warming and a reaction to warming.

No contradiction, in fact Hansen predicted the lag before it was found.

Steve,
I guess the question is what is the difference between what you claim Hansen predicted and a perpetual motion machine?
followed by
How does the climate system tell the difference between Anthro CO2 and good natural CO2?

Masher:
If warming (from any cause) led to oceans releasing CO2,
and CO2 was a major cause of global warming,
then we would have had runaway global warming billions of years ago
… and the good news is none of us would be here to read your silly posts.

You have just provided evidence that CO2 is a minor variable for climate change, obviously overwhelmed by other causes of climate change, because there has never been runaway warming with CO2 levels up to 20x higher than today for most of the past 4.5 billion years.

Thank you for helping the skeptics explain why CO2 does NOT control the climate.

RichardGreene: Nobody claims that any warming of oceans causes them to release CO2. Instead, oceans constantly are emitting CO2 to the atmosphere and absorbing it from the atmosphere. The balance of those two directions of flow depends on the temperatures, the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the “amount of CO2” in the ocean (I put the latter in quotes because it’s really the complex ocean chemistry that affects CO2 in and out of air). Oceans can continue to net absorb CO2 from the atmosphere despite increasing temperature, if the CO2 in the atmosphere increases fast enough from non-oceanic sources, as is happening now.

Steve, if what you wish to was actually true, then the warming should have accelerated once CO2 started increasing. Unless you wish to postulate that somehow, magically, all other forcings stopped the minute CO2 started increasing.
Otherwise you have to admit that CO2 is a minor forcing, at best.

By opposite she meant two things. One, opposite to how Gore presented it and how it is often presented. ( first the warmth, then the CO2 increase.) ( DUH like you did not know that)
As to your conjecture that the positive feedbacks dominate with additional CO2, well the earth itself is offering lots of contrary evidence. However as you denigrate your scientific betters ( PHD NIPCC scientist)
you are unlikely to be educated.

If the forcings are solar, then after the planet warms the oceans will outgas c02, which will increase the warming

Standard warmist dogma, I’ve read it before on warmist websites. But just think – so far, you are talking about natural phenomena without human effects. Then what, in your view, caused the start of cooling at the end of previous no-fossil-fuel interglacials? Or previous no-fossil-fuel interstadials during the current interglacial?

From what I’ve seen, you are too well informed to use the tactics of denying the existence of interstadials and ignoring interglacials. So what natural phenomenon is powerful enough to override the CO2-amplified warming and start a cool cycle?

If you say solar/orbital/ocean circulation, you are opening the door to the concept that CO2 may not be the primary driver of climate.

Be careful how far you follow these lines of reasoning Steve, you might turn into a sceptic. Or even a skeptic
Your friends may disown you. You may be cast into the outer darkness.

There we have it. Natural forcings that are strong enough to change the current climate. We might call them “natural climate variations”. And those forcings are strong enough to change the current trend into a new trend, which requires a large quantity of energy to overcome the stability of the thermal mass. And these natural forcings sustain that energy until the oceans “outgas C02” a process that can take several hundred years.
But now the dilemma of what happens to the natural forcings once the levels of CO2 increase? Do they hand off the baton to CO2 and go back to dormancy? Or is it possible that they continue to do what they have been doing, and CO2 is a minor player that contributes little, compared to natural forcings, and water vapor? If you are a logical person, the answer is difficult to avoid.
It is a remarkable feat of human intellectual flexibility that so many can successfully avoid an obvious answer! We may subconsciously still be trying to claim we are the “Center of The Universe” (or at least able to control our little slice of it).

James Hansen: Global average temperatures will rise by 0.5-1.0 Farenheit 1990-2000 and then another 2.0-4.0 Fahrenheit 2000-2010 (quoted in New York Times interview 1986) – are we 5.0 F hotter than 1986?

Bill McKibben: “A few more decades of ungoverned fossil fuel use and we burn up … straight to a place with a similar temperature to [hell]” (his 1989 End of Nature book) – Imprecise, scaremongering, unscientific bull****

John Holden: “Carbon-dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020” (1986, quoted by Paul Ehrlich) – CO2 emissions accelerated, population went from 4.9bn to 7.4bn, malnutrition fell dramatically. So not just wrong, the exact opposite happened.

Amory Lovins: “[W]e don’t need any more big electric generating stations. We already have about twice as much electricity we can use to advantage” (Nov 1977) – Computers, smartphones, yeah don’t need those….

There has been no disavowel of these predictions, no introspection about why they were horrifically wrong, and instead of being humble before proposing the same policies again, they are arrogant and treat the public like idiots.

It is good to ask questions. We ask so that we may understand, and give someone an opportunity to explain. Children have a great sense of inquisition and will rarely let something go if the explanation doesn’t make sense to them. Listening to stories of Professors/ teachers admonishing students for questioning them about Climate change, can only mean one thing. They are unable to satisfactorily explain it. I am more impressed with a simple admit of this than to have someone digging in with indignation and dismissal. When a child asks awkward questions about Santa, an adult will rely on the ”but he’s magic” answer, and for a while that will do. Well, we know how often CO2 has been given magical properties by those unable to answer the awkward questions about Climate change and every event that occurs being attributed to the Human factor.

“If we’re worried about CO2 causing global warming, wouldn’t it be much worse if we were all driving cars that had water vapor as their exhaust?”
————
Weird or what?
Burning hydrocarbons also produces water! She did not know this?
Water vapour requires warmth to remain vapour there is a vast resource of warm water all producing vapour-the sea, the land, lakes etc – the difference between fossil and ectric would make a minimal differenc. But if not warm enough the value falls as some form of precipitation and is out of the warming equation. All climate scientists could explain this to her.

Close to reality.
-You have correclty identified that Water Vapour dwarfs the effects other trace gasses in abundance and in activity.
-You have correclty identified that Water Vapour reacts to the local temperature adn precipuitates or forms clouds of ice and changes the local albedo.
-But you missed the fact that this debunks AGW.

The author of the piece was describing how – as a child – she could see that the argument beinfg presented was silly. That she also realised that a photon doesn’t care if CO2 or H20 is excited shows far more wit than someone who believes CO2 has special, demonic powers.

Your argument is that CO2 lasts so long in the atmosphere that it ovewrwhelms the effect of water vapour. This may be true on a snowball Earth but not on a planet with liquid water oceans.
Which this is.

It’s more a matter of wavelength of energy that the H2O molecules block due to their shape, isn’t it? That H2O fills in a different part of the “gaps” than CO2?
I took a Remote Sensing course last year, my vocab isn’t quite up to par anymore.
I’ll admit I was probably wrong overall in regards to water vapor from those H cars (I’m also a big fan of the tech— if it can be proven viable) those years ago. Once you add enough to the atmosphere, would it no longer add to the “insulation” because all the gaps water molecules can fill already have been filled?

Clair Masters,
Yes, “all the gaps water molecules can fill already have been filled”. Almost. But the important thing is that the gaps in the spectrum that water molecules fill are also the very same gaps that CO2 molecules can flll.
This should not be a surprise.

H2O is a bent molecule (because it has pairs of lone electrons on the C repelling the electrons on the C=O bonds) and so it has more potential ways to bend than a linear molecule like CO2. It has more potential ways to absorb a photon. And molecules like H2O and CO2 do not shuffle along politely to queue for space on the electromagnetic spectrum. They aren’t sentient. If any photon of the right energy hits them they will absorb it and delay its escape back out of the atmoshere to space.

Of course, there are other, rarer vibration modes that do not overlap. But these are negligably small (a trillion pool balls cueing off will lead to some landing and resting on top of the 8-Ball but don’t practice your break for that occurence).
If AGW relies on those cases to be newsworthy then CO2 is insignificant.

Finally remember that these effects are logarithmic. And not in the ‘getting bigger’ way.
If you keep throwing stickers labelled “CO2” or “H2O” at a window you will block the light from getting inside. But when half the window is stickered, half of the next volley will double up. It is half as darkening as the first volley.
And when three quarters of the window is covered up, the next volley will then be half as darkening again.

You can’t ignore the H2O even if you think that it will precipitate out from the atmosphere at some point. It is always in a great abundance relative to ithe impact of any addition.

Clair Masters: No, the reason adding water vapor directly to the atmosphere does not force increased warming, is because the vapor condenses out of the atmosphere quickly–10 days as a global average. Water vapor on Earth can act only as a feedback to warming from other causes, because of the Earth’s range of temperatures and pressures, and because of the vast pools of liquid water. See my explanations and links in my other comments here.

1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record. [published on icecap.us in January 2008]

2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.

3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.

—-_————-
Are you all joking?
Cowlags temperature by 9 months to 5000 years, it cannot be all -please chose an approximate range. You just look silly choosing millennia. Or is this the accuracy of your science

Ice cores do not have the resolution to detect the 9 month lag. It takes about half a century for them to settle and trap the atmosphere.
You are not comparing the same thing.
It’s like saying
“The best team wins the League and Leicester won the league. Therefore Leicester are the greatest team of all time… But Real Madrid have won most European Cups? That can’t be true – it must be Leicester”.

Stick around and you might notice that a lot of people with expertise write here.
You may learnt a thing or two.

So you are suggesting that the pay is 9 months? Or what.?
If you would care to check co2 and O2in atmosphere I think you will find that increasing co2 equates to decreasing O2. I.e. you are not looking at water absorption of co2 you are looking at oxidation of carbon. There is little delay in this process.
Also where are your spikes and dips corresponding to lia.mwp.rwp. etc.

Stick around and you might notice that a lot of people with expertise write here.
You may learnt a thing or two.
_—————-
Once maybe but not now. Check out the comments. It’s all about calling people communist, ignorant,sub-normal. This site lost all respect in the treatment of solar expert Leif svalgaard.

halfrunt,
You obviously do not have a clue about — ice core resolution — or what it means. Consequently you assertion “Once maybe but not now” is meaningless. I am also dubious of your claim since it means you are also a world renowned expert on climate capable of judging the contributions here as worthless.

Some collected what wisdom from this thread alone
Sam The First says: September 7, 2017 at 6:44 am
… and the diminishing number of brainwashed idealist Leftists who want to Remain in the EU. They are terrified of stepping out of line, not understanding how Establishment and unthinking they have become.

Ziiex Zeburz says: September 7, 2017 at 4:06 am
Griff.
Do you also SH&T in you bed ??
It is obvious that you eat upside down, your breath stinks!

hunter says: September 7, 2017 at 3:55 am
But any deaths during heat waves are due to AGW?
You are so full of shite it is a wonder you Have any brain at all to run your autonomic system.
Actually you sound as thoughtless and shallow as the ignorant fanatics the author of this essay is surrounded by.

CD in Wisconsin says: September 7, 2017 at 7:47 am
@Griff: You have your understanding of what is going on in climate science horribly and ignorantly bass ackwards. it isn’t the skeptics with the belief system, it is the alarmists.
With their CAGW belief system, the alarmists are the clerics, the clergy. Skeptics are applying science to the alarmists belief system with their questions and refuting evidence. The job of the skeptics is to determine the robustness of the CAGW theory, and they are finding it wanting.

MarkW says:
September 7, 2017 at 6:26 am
Models aren’t science.

Clair Masters, … I should have known what I was getting into when I looked around and saw several students with either half shaved heads or hair colors that in nature scream “I’m toxic”.

D P Laurable says: September 7, 2017 at 6:09 am
I have put 4 children through college. Substitute “gender theory” or “Marxism” for “climate change” and there you have it, a college education.

Monckton of Brenchley says: September 7, 2017 at 7:06 am
… that on climate change, as on a growing number of other subjects, the totalitarians who ruthlessly control academe are no longer willing to be challenged. They demand obedience, where my professors demanded to be challenged, and delighted in the awakening of young minds.

Ghalfrunt, I can assure you there is more science and fewer personal attacks on WUWT than on any alarmist site. This post, by its very nature, will elicit more subjective comments than most (it’s more about the experience than the science). But, this site isn’t for the faint of heart – commenters often tear into fellow skeptics if they don’t get the science right (or the spelling, or the punctuation, or …)

I noticed that most of the comments in your list are directed at institutions rather than people. Do you disagree with them? I would love to see you go to any college campus and pretend to be a skeptic, a capitalist, or a Trump supporter. I think you’d find that most of the comments here are true. I’m sure you would never do that though, because you know that you would be putting your career, and possibly your life, at risk. Beware the peaceful protesters!

Off topic, but this the first challenge to my understanding to date that green energy is a disaster suppirted by hot air and subsidy.https://cleantechnica.com/page/3/
The article challenges the IEA and claims tgat green energy production is much greater than predicted.
This seems counter factual, to say the least.
I would appreciate any serious critical analysis.
I see more than a few dubious pints, but would like others to pick at this.

We have hope. This woman is the proof.
I must admit, I was joyed by one of her remarks – as a big fan of H fuel for vehicles I never thought of the problem she raised about excess water vapor. I don’t know why but it made me happy to find problems with my views.
Really saw myself in her description of things in college.
Keep it up!

Water vapor is a condensing gas in Earths’ range of temperature, pressure, and abundant liquid water sources. More vapor than the air can hold at a given temperature falls out again as liquid water. That’s why warm summer air has more water vapor than cold winter air. That’s why your local weather reports mention both relative and absolute humidities. Globally on average, water vapor in excess of the carrying capacity of the air falls out in about 10 days. Therefore water vapor is a feedback from warming, not a forcing of warming. The water vapor created by hydrogen engines therefore does not cause warming.

I’ve never lived in a place where relative humidity was 100%, year round. Many places that I have lived the relative humidity often gets down below 20%.
Your belief that all water vapor from such engines quickly leaves the atmosphere is not supported by the evidence.

MarkW, I did not assert that relative humidity always is 100% year round. I specifically said the opposite. Read what I wrote. Then explain how rain can exist if, as you believe, water vapor permanently remains in air. Also explain how oceans can exist despite their liquid water constantly evaporating to become vapor. Then take a second grade science class: https://www.education.com/science-fair/article/the-dew-point/

I have put 4 children through college. Substitute “gender theory” or “Marxism” for “climate change” and there you have it, a college education. What I have noticed in recent graduates I have hired is a complete absence of critical intellectual faculties outside of the leftist cant. They cannot analyze and come to a conculsion. They wait for it to be fed to them, which is what the system conditions them to do. Most will eventually climb out of this hole, but by then they will have wasted half their productive lives. I am past anger now, only sad.

If you keep going back in history, you can learn about how these people and others like them (Carnegie) founded the original eugenics movement in the US (now Planned Parenthood), founded the Kaiser Wilhelm Eugenics Institute in Germany in the late 1930s, gave Nazi Germany the means to fight WW2 (coal to liquids and tetra-ethyl lead) and financed and transferred technology to the Soviets.

There is an excellent book by Anthony Sutton available online which details these treasonous activities.

There is a post on my blog regarding the Rockefellers Bros website.
There is a great search engine there as well. Never guess some of the names that pop up. Ever hear of Green Peace or the Sierra Club?

Well done Clair, it is extremely brave to put up your views in this forum where they can be, and have been subject to critical appraisal. My geology degree was in 1969 at Exeter, uk and we were excited by the first debates on plate tectonics. We must have had good teachers as we were always asked to consider both sides of any argument and to criticize any papers that did not provide sound logic or strong evidence. There were no holy cows and we learned to be solidly skeptical as all good scientists should. In my final year I studied palaeo – climates as part of my course and so developed an understanding of the huge range of natural variation, so have been profoundly disturbed by the huge ignorance of the current crop of academics and politicians on this issue, and even among my environmental science colleagues who accept the concensus without question. I am also distressed at the deterioration in standards at what was a great university that now drives a lot of the myths on climate change, such as the recent failed expedition by boat to the north pole led by an academic from Exeter. You have the makings of a good scientist but watch your back. This journey (war?) We are on has many years to run yet. Don’t let it drive you away from geology. We will need you when we are all dead and buried and the world turns cold.

Pedantic copy editor here: the headline is a bust. I expected a story about an undergraduate “climate science” course that had the opposite effect on the author as was intended by the prof. Properly the hed should read, ‘The making of a climate skeptic — in middle school’.

I am always fascinated by Wyoming trying to destroy the only industries that make them money—oil and gas and coal. The University teaches them that people here who work in fossil fuels are wrong to do so, but that’s what pays the teacher’s salary. Same for putting in the super computer to study climate change. Why try to destroy your state? (I admit that has been the pattern the entire 35 years I’ve lived here. Luckily, Wyoming is pretty slow at self-destruction. I suspect they’ll get there, however.)
If oil and gas go, the professor can kiss his tenured position goodbye, as can the rest of the University staff. It’s completely suicidal thinking.

Claire,
When you use your science to explore for resources, do keep in mind that you seek an actual target, one that further testing can allow description in detail.
Conversely, if you get sidetracked into doing say climate change modelling you will find that the target is often undefinable, usually meaning that you cannot know if you are right or wrong.
That is a sort of scientific accountability that makes it a requirement that you never adjust or fudge scientific data. Fudging will never help you find that next resource – but fudging in soft sciences can be covered up removing the goal posts and so on.
So do stick with your direction of hard science or hard engineering. Not only are the physical rewards greater, so are the intellectual rewards. When you get past retirement, you will find it comforting that you have given Society, through your skills, far more than you have taken. It is hard to make that claim, to feel that satisfaction, if all your Life has done is playing with numbers and social engineering and propaganda.
You can’t wish a new resource into being by fudging the figures; but you can tell some really exciting scientific stories in global warming if you are prepared to prostitute your science.
Finally, do avoid getting old and cranky like I am here. Geoff – geochemist of old.

The head posting is a rare and wonderful contribution from a courageous student who has begun to ask questions and has discovered, to her horror, that on climate change, as on a growing number of other subjects, the totalitarians who ruthlessly control academe are no longer willing to be challenged. They demand obedience, where my professors demanded to be challenged, and delighted in the awakening of young minds. Congratulations to this brave student. I hope that she continues to have the courage to ask questions of both sides. As al-Haytham used to say, “The road to the truth is long and hard, but that is the road we must follow.”

As an academic (and avowed sceptic) myself, I wouldn’t say that academia is ruled by totalitarians so much as by opportunists. I would add that it is a misconception that academics should be particularly good at critical thinking — they are not.

As an academic, you are supposed to produce and pursue good ideas. If you aspire to such a profession, you must be convinced that your ideas are in fact good. There are two ways to achieve this. One is by actually having good ideas; the other is by having poor critical thinking skills, which will allow you believe that your very crummy ideas are actually good.

This second type of academic is far more common than the first one, which creates opportunities for those of the second kind to gang up and exclude those of the first kind altogether. When this happens, new scientific fads, err, “fields” like “climate change” are born. What makes this particular fad so special is not how stupid it is, but how much forces and interests from outside academia have taken to it and blown it out of all proportion.

I praise the student who is thinking for herself which is essential in today’s environment. Possibly there are more with such values, but they know they will be punished in the University environment so they prefer to not confront the propaganda on climate change. As an Engineer, I can tell you it is normally not to difficult in the Engineering community to convince most colleagues that global warming and climate change is largely over exaggerated. All that most engineers need is to get the plots, data and facts which I send them from WUWT and they can be convinced that CAGW mantra is political not real science.
Anthony should be proud of how his website has impacted a very wide audience in the Engineering world just by spreading the facts via the internet.
One possible bright spot. My son went to and graduated from U Mass Amherst which is a major center of lefty liberalism in the US. I found out he and his friends were listening to Rush Limbaugh while they were there so the LEFTY Professors may not be impacting as many students as much as we worry about. Of course the far left and Global warming students and politicians are the loudest and passionate about the subject as they demand everyone accept their beliefs, not liberal in allowing other beliefs. Their number may be less than it appears. I hope

I’m pleased to say in the years following that article I successfully obtained my PhD and have been in gainful employment since.

The problem we have is that, other than islands of sanity such as this site, we have limited ability to publicly identify one another and get a sense of our numbers and offer mutual support.

The academy should be the last – the very last – place where one has to hide objections and different points of view but unfortunately many univerities (with some notable exceptions at both the university and departmental level) transitioned from places of learning and education to places of indoctrination and irrationality some years ago. I have a hope that academia will return to what it once was but it is a very slim hope and, like you Clair, I see my future in the private sector rather than within academia.

I red some paragraphs twice, maturity of the author (Ms. Masters) is unquestionable, but after reading again :

Maybe a week later, he handed me a piece of notebook paper with “research” written up on it—mostly a series of bullet points about the American Lands Council which he somehow connected to white supremacy, right wing fanaticism, and most bizarrely of all the Kim Davis controversy. I couldn’t believe that someone who was a “scientific” person felt the need to use the guilt by association trap, the screeching leftist “Racist! Sexist! Homophobe!”

Good for you, “Clair”. It is possible to get a real education in college, but it takes the sort of effort you are putting into it. I went to school in California in the 1970’s, and it was equally bad then as far as political preaching intruding into purportedly “scientific” areas.

Claire,
I’m a UW engineering alum, my son is currently a student in the Petroleum Engineering program, graduating in December.

I too was a believer and then the evidence converted me to skeptic. I’m surprised to hear how much the AGW propaganda has infiltrated our only University. I’ve had many a discussion with my son about this and he seemed to paint a slightly less ominous picture. I got the impression most of his profs were more skeptic than believer.

Either way, congratulations on your career choice and for learning the most important lesson – critical thinking.

Lord Monckton congratulates the author because she had ‘begun to ask questions’ and expresses the hope ‘that she continues to have the courage to ask questions of both sides’. Maybe she might take that advice and questions her own statement: “It’s propaganda—dogmatic as any religion.”

It’s not really to surprising that the “polar bears are dying and it’s all your fault” scold is starting to wear thin with young adults. After all, as reported elsewhere the polar bear population is growing contrary to the global warming predictions.

I sometimes think back to my grade school years in the early 1970s when we were paraded into the school gym for a lecture about how, by 1985 (I think), the air would be so polluted that we wouldn’t be able to breathe and the water would be so polluted there would be none to drink. Absurd nonsense told to us by people who (we thought) should have known better.

PaulH,
Do you remember when:
– the Hudson River caught fire
– inadequate Federal legislation resulted in the mass dumping of PCBs into the Hudson, Chicago River, etc.
– lead paint, etc.
…the list is sadly too long for this comment

There is nothing wrong with an effort to seek insightful Industrial Design and Engineering solutions. Solutions which manage environmental impact and health concerns.

However, you’re correct, they create a perceived crisis to consolidate public opinion and leveraged action.

John M,
There are many documented cases of Pb poisoning from paint but they are all about high doses such as from pica for lead.
There does not seem to be a compendium of low dose lead poisoning victims. (Show us the bodies meme). One might conclude that low level Pb toxicity is an imaginary construct.
Yes, I have read the Needleman series of papers claiming harm to the IQ of youngsters and low Pb dose. This work fails to address the reverse hypothesis that youngsters silly enough to ingest lead were in the low IQ category from the start.
If you wished to waste your time you could find adequate material to postulate that low level Pb poisoning is a social construct, just as full of poor science as global warming is. Geoff

Geoff: You can find primate studies showing exposure to lead has a cognitive impact that can’t be attributed to reverse causality. Apparently hearing sensitivity showing an inverse correlation with lead levels. Reverse causality isn’t an attractive hypothesis in this case either. You are correct that most studies didn’t properly consider reverse causality.

I remember listening to NPR years ago. Global warming was a new issue at that time and I had no opinion on the subject. So, NPR had a story about farmer’s journals. By studying them over the last 300 years, it was clear that planting now starts some weeks earlier than it did 300 years ago. That seemed compelling evidence to me – I was convinced.
Then it occurred to me that 300 years ago was in the middle of the little ice age. Not once had the NPR story mentioned this fact – not once. This seemed to me a stunning omission of a relevant fact. So was born a skeptic.

Congratulations to “Clair Masters” on her masterful clear thinking in the face of all the indoctrination she has endured in high school and college.

My advice to her would be to nod her head through her mineral resources course and write down on her exams everything the professor wants to read, then she can graduate and become an excellent petroleum engineer, helping to provide energy we all need (including the Al Gore’s of the world) to escape back-breaking labor and poverty.

I graduated in 1978 with a Chemical Engineering degree, but even then we had a Humanities professor who blamed “science and technology” for all the evils of the world in front of a class full of future engineers, who all joked about him as soon as we left the classroom. This was when cars lined up at gas stations for miles at 6:00 AM, because the Saudis cut their oil production, and our genius President (Carter) was telling us we had to turn down our home thermostats and wear sweaters indoors, because we would soon run out of oil. Gee, how did that work out? Forty years later, young women are majoring in Petroleum Engineering!

“Clair Masters” is facing an even more difficult challenge than my classmates and I faced, because her geology professor does have scientific training and is not as easily rebutted as a humanities professor with little or no technical knowledge.

But she should take heart and finish her degree, because engineering is a great profession for her. An engineer’s job performance is judged based on whether what he or she designs and builds eventually WORKS and makes money for the employer or client company, usually within two years. Engineers are rewarded based on factual, provable results, and if drillers eventually find oil where “Clair Masters” says they will, she will be rewarded, regardless of her opinions on global warming.

Climate modelers have been saying since the 1980’s that increasing carbon dioxide would produce runaway global warming, but temperatures have been going sideways since 1998. Where are their results???

Once “Clair Masters” graduates and starts working as an engineer, she will be surrounded by climate skeptics. Most engineers are, because the facts they see simply do not justify the scary predictions that AGW activists have been making for 30 years.

This was a really well written article. I had a similar experience in college. It’s not easy being a millennial (I’m 29) who doesn’t conform to the popular narrative on AGW. Unfortunately this debate gets personal all too often and it even gets to the point where friendships and relationships are strained because of it.

Way more interesting will be to see which climate pseudoscientists pushing fake science, like Mann and his ilk will actually be doing jail time in the future. It will fascinating to watch the whole “climate” mythology collapse under the weight of its own lies.

Well when it comes to the damage caused by climate change exacerbated natural events it should be the Big Oil companies who pay for this rather them tax payers. I can see the public getting behind these law suits and Dr Michael E. Mann will be praised – rather than villified – for raising public awareness to AGW.

Ivan, how would food and other goods be delivered to stores and other distribution points without oil to provide the fuel for the delivery vehicles? Go a month without using anything delivered via the use of oil and then tell us how evil “big oil” is

The lawsuit seeks damages caused by SLR in Marin and San Mateo Counties, along
with the City of Imperial Beach.

From the press release:

“The best available science shows billions of dollars of homes, businesses, roads and other facilities, as
well as thousands of acres of beaches, wetlands and habitat areas, are at risk from rising seas
and more severe storms. The cost of trying to protect them, and the human anguish over
those that will be lost, will be shocking and crippling.”

I’m no lawyer, but how can you sue for hypothetical damages that haven’t occurred?

Although I know that you will not investigate it, Ivan, the “Big Tobacco” lawsuits were an example of both a bill of attainder and ex post facto law (civil, unfortunately, so the courts do not apply the US Constitutional prohibition to both). The cases were a gift to the liability bar by their allies in the various state governments.

Nothing I really quite is unfounded if in a mainstream newspaper that has to use proven sources.

No afraid not. I don’t knit my own clothes or am a vegan. Not sure why you have a jaundiced view of pro climate changers. Arnold Schwarzenegger is one, Michael Bloomberg is one, Barrack Obama is one … all highly successful in their different fields. No specific profile in my opinion.

I have been following the record of the various flavors of greens since the late 1960’s, and they have been consistently wrong in many of their claims. So if I seem to have a jaundiced view of climate change advocates, it is a matter of history.
The other reason is the politics of the IPCC. My family tended towards various types of radical politics, with Birchers, Irish Republican Army supporters, Socialist Labor Party members, to ordinary labor union activists.
I am mostly immunized to silly political arguments, having been exposed to a wide range of weirdness from an early age.
Ivan, you are something of a sucker on not paying attention to the politics of your sources, and how they influence the reporting. You just might not be old enough.

At the age of 55 I am pretty certain about what is valid and what isn’t. If I wasn’t convinced in what I say and post I wouldn’t spend so much time in WUWT; could be doing other stuff.

As a European, I think Europeans see this whole issue of AGW from an environmental perspective whereas in the US it has become highly politicised one. A shame because it obscures much of what is important.

Reg,
I have labored under the idea that in order to demonstrate “standing” and have a case go forward to trial, it must be demonstrated that the plaintiff has actually suffered a loss.

In the absence of an actual loss, perhaps damage might be awarded as a ratio based on the probability of a loss? This reminds me of a recent movie where future-criminals were arrested before they committed their crimes — based I think, on a computer model.

I’m easily old enough to be your father (don’t worry I haven’t been to Europe) and I too am convinced about what I say and post, which seems to be the opposite of you. So, who is right? I think the facts should determine it, not who is the more experienced.

Personally, I think that the MSM makes too much of the supposed correlation between the position on CAGW and political party affiliation. Yes, there might be a bias that can be demonstrated, but in the absence of good evidence, I’d be inclined to comment that the way that one sees and interacts with the world is more likely an independent influence on both political leaning and belief in CAGW. That is, those who are less gullible, more inclined to question things, have higher standards for evidence, and are less influenced by transient emotions are also likely to be conservative rather than progressive, and certainly likely to demand evidence about the changing climate that is more difficult to criticize than what we are provided.

It’s not about blame—it’s about another pocket to pick. Drug manufacturers are being sued for making addictive drugs—to relieve pain, but who cares (except the people who are in pain)? Pharmaceuticals have deep pockets. So do oil companies. The absolute proof it’s about money is none of the industries involved will be shut down, even though they are “killing us”. If they are shut down, there’s no money to abscond with. It’s always about the money, never about the truth.

Lass I love your talent for critical thinking. I was was lucky to do my first degree (Ecology) under Prof. Amyan Macfadyen FRS who was the father of British animal ecology and Prof. Palmer Newbould FRS a champion of nature conservation….these have been the most influential people in my life, as they honed my skills as a critical thinker. After a Masters in Hydrobiology I was forced in the early 80’s to change tack to Dentistry….a profession which is sadly based on rote learning. But as someone wanted to study ceramics in art college the combination of craft and science has enabled me to be a leader in general dental practice in my career. You may wonder where this is going!
What I want to say is that do not fight a brick wall…life is too short. Use your talents to progress where you do not hit impediments. This will let you establish yourself and you can use you critical talents to attack those who follow this absurd dogma. Daily I educate my patients on on the nonsense preached by the warmists!
Good luck in the future!

The world needs voices of reason like yours, asking the challenging questions that everyone else doesn’t bother to think about, don’t want to consider, or are too afraid to ask. I too was one of those students who asked questions of my professors, most of whom didn’t like it, although a few were open minded enough to engage politely. It’s very important that people like you are willing to have this discussion across the aisle, instead of everyone only discussing things with like-minded people, as is becoming too common here in our modern politically-polarized society. Best wishes to you, Claire, as you finish school, and beyond!

Excellent Essay. I have danced many of these dances. It is very dangerous to attempt to point at the other side of the equation. Realizing that Water Vapor is more deadly than Carbon Dioxide is overly obvious. Because it is obvious, it is below talking about.

The obvious is always on the table for me. That makes it a danger. Anyone can steer the conversation a different direction by pointing to the obvious and making it the discussion point. There are lots of obvious things.

Whether it be an essay, a comment, or a tweet, there is never enough room to talk about all of the parts of one obvious thing.

As I’ve mentioned in other threads, Disinformation Campaigns and the lies wrapped around a truism, and Climate Change is a Disinformation campaign to be clear, do NOT have to be anywhere near 100% accepted to be successful as propaganda.

The indoctrination with the climate change lie starting in elementary school by Progressives is a powerful planted idea that will greatly diminish the Millennial generation’s ability to move forward on real scientific progress for at least the next 50 years.

The Millennials will be mired in these climate propaganda memes for most, if not all, of their lives, even as cold climate cycles return again, as they will.

As someone who was at the University of Wyoming, and then went on to teach in another state, I can say that UW is one of the least dogmatc global warming universities out there. If Claire moves to another state/university, it will only get worse.

There are a few old professors at UW who think global warming is generally bunk, but they have learned to mostly keep it to themselves.

My advice for Claire is to gently push back enough to feel people out. Stick to the experimentalists, they hands on types. Most people will not be worth talking to, as they are so far in the tank for their belief they they won’t even be able to present arguments/evidence to back up their belief. Eventually, you will find those who think as you do, or are open to debate without getting offended. Hold tight to the latter, as they are rare, and getting rarer.

Americans are losing faith in the value of a college degree, with majorities of young adults, men and rural residents saying college isn’t worth the cost, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey shows.

The findings reflect an increase in public skepticism of higher education from just four years ago and highlight a growing divide in opinion falling along gender, educational, regional and partisan lines. They also carry political implications for universities, already under public pressure to rein in their costs and adjust curricula after decades of sharp tuition increases.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts– I love how this site always attracts constructive (and often good humored) commentary.

I do feel lucky that the university I attend isn’t nearly as bad as some others. Sometimes it seems the admin is trying to “catch up” to other universities’ “standards”, but overall I think the people of Wyoming generally have little tolerance for nonsense, so I do have hope.

I’m going to stick with this resource class, keeping my head down to pass. Once I am finished with this class I might drop the nom de plume and speak even more openly about my experiences. It’s really something though, isn’t it, that I might even need to worry about my opinions affecting the outcome of a science course?

Given current politics on the issue, do not go public until you have enough money to tell the True Believers to perform some unlikely act. Given search engines, being public on a controversial issue is not a safe choice.

It is indeed a sad state of affairs that you feel you have to keep a low profile at an institution that, at its core, is intended to expand the intellectual horizons of the students. However, I suspect that there are many professionals who also feel that they have to toe the line until they retire.

Part of the irony here is that, if I were a hiring manager for a company that depended on creativity to be successful, I’d look for someone that can think ‘outside of the box.’ Yet, higher education is actively suppressing non-conformal thinking. It does not bode well for American society.

Miss Masters
You are very intelligent person so it is a bit odd, as some have pointed out, that you gave enough personal details to be identified by your institution with a very little effort.
Also, I’m somewhat puzzled by the purpose of inclusion of the paragraph quoted in my comment further above (vukcevic September 7, 2017 at 7:44 am)

For example, glancing at the first link you give on water vapour the article misses the fact (yes fact!) that water vapour is not necessarily a positive feedback. Sometimes it is a negative feedback.
Have you ever been outside when a cloud passes over?
That website hasn’t. Or rather they ignore inconvenient truths.

Consider this: Over millennia there have been volcanoes and forest fires that have increased CO2 levels. The oceans still had water in them so the effect should be amplified.
But… throughout the lifespan of planet Earth… the warming was never amplified to dangerous levels.
These events never coincided? Proof of a benevolent God and disproof of plate tectonics?

Or QED: It’s not a problem.

Many of the reasons to be sceptical can be found at that website if you read it with some technical knowledge, an open mind and the realisation that they are on the make.

Sorry Tom Dayton, you are confused.
Where do you think the clouds come from? You seem to think that as clouds are liquid water that they must form from liquid water. You seem to imply that clouds are formed from mists rising or inverse waterfalls.
Both are ridiculous. But the latter would be nice to see.

Clouds are formed from water vapour seeding out. More water vapour – more clouds.

M Courtney: Clouds form from water vapor only when water vapor condenses to form liquid water. Water vapor condenses when there is more water vapor in the air than the air’s temperature can support. Increasing the air’s temperature increases the air’s carrying capacity of water vapor, so if all else is equal, there will be less condensation into clouds, and existing clouds will evaporate. In other words, regardless of the role of clouds, water vapor itself acts only as a positive feedback.

You asserted that water vapor can act as a negative feedback. I showed you were wrong. Now you are trying to distract from being wrong, by switching the topic to clouds. (That’s called a “Gish Gallop.”) Of course clouds form from water vapor. But oceans, too, form from water vapor via precipitation. So what? If you now want to discuss clouds, here is a summary of the probably nearly zero NET effect of changes in clouds with global warming (read Basic and Intermediate tabbed panes): https://skepticalscience.com/clouds-negative-feedback.htm

I’ve often wondered if I should go to skepticalscience.com to read through the explanations and counter arguments…

Well, after having read through the borderline silly explanation for water vapor feedback, I can ease my conscience on this regard. Sure, it’s a single data point, but I have other things I’d rather do with my time than read through material that offers no scientific validity.

By way of explanation, the water vapor feedback argument as described by skepticalscience offers only part of the story. The pieces of what’s happening that aren’t addressed make all the difference. For example, the role of airborn particles in the formation of clouds is not addressed. Another example is the unstated conflation of atmospheric air temperature with sst. These failures, amongst many many others, render the explanation useless to all but the most close minded, ignorant, and scientifically illiterate CAGW supporters.

So, thus will I conclude that there’s no value in reading through any of their other arguments. To be clear, I was actually hoping for a robust explanation that could withstand more than a mere modicum of critical thought. Oh well…carry on.

ripshin: Particulates do not in any way affect the atmospheric water vapor capacity’s dependence on the atmosphere’s temperature. For any given amount of particulates, increasing the atmospheric temperature increases the atmosphere’s capacity for water vapor. Likewise, sea surface temperature does not in any way affect the atmospheric water vapor capacity’s dependence on the atmosphere’s temperature. Therefore in a post explaining narrowly and specifically that water vapor is a feedback rather than a forcing, there would be zero relevance of mentioning particulates and sea surface temperature. You are trying the classic Gish Gallop–changing the topic to get the audience to forget that you were wrong.

An excellent way to quickly learn the fundamentals of global warming and the context of the creation of our scientific knowledge of it, is to read physicist and science historian Spencer Weart’s The Discoery of Global Warming: https://history.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

That article is fundamentally flawed. It ignores the fundamental climatology made by Hubert Lamb. Conveniently.

Earlier scientists had sought a single master-key to climate, but now they were coming to understand that climate is an intricate system responding to a great many influences. Volcanic eruptions and solar variations were still plausible causes of change, and some argued these would swamp any effects of human activities. Even subtle changes in the Earth’s orbit could make a difference. To the surprise of many, studies of ancient climates showed that astronomical cycles had partly set the timing of the ice ages. Apparently the climate was so delicately balanced that almost any small perturbation might set off a large shift. According to the new “chaos” theories, in a complex system a shift might happen suddenly. Support for the idea came from ice cores arduously drilled from the Greenland ice sheet. They showed large and disconcertingly abrupt temperature jumps in the past, on a scale not of centuries but decades.

Pseudoscience masquerading as authoritative. You get fairground barkers claiming that magnets cure horses with the magical effects of “chaos”.
Chaos actually means that the system is irreducibly complex.
An inconvenient fact for climate modelers.

But let’s just debunk the article simply.

Support for the idea came from ice cores arduously drilled from the Greenland ice sheet. They showed large and disconcertingly abrupt temperature jumps in the past, on a scale not of centuries but decades.

That refers to using O18 as a proxy for temperature (dubious) and claiming that local effects on Greenland are global (very dubious) and assuming that the ice firn on the glacier seals in less than half a century to pin the O18 in position (wrong – it’s not trapped until about 50 metres down).

The best we can say is that natural causes have historically overwhelmed the current impact of man. 10 degrees in a century is an order of magnitude greater change than the 20th Century.

M Courtney: No, the scientific and mathematical meaning of chaos is NOT “the system is irreducibly complex.” Its relevance to weather and climate is that although instantaneous states of the weather-climate system cannot be projected with much accuracy, STATISTICS about that system can be. By definition, “climate” is the statistics of the system over long terms such as 30 years. Weather is short term statistics and instantaneous states. Weather can be forecast usefully accurately in many places up to about 5 days in the future, then still pretty accurately up to about 10 days. Climate can be projected well as statistics of periods of about 30 years or longer. Projecting weather is an “initial values” problem. Projecting climate is a “boundary conditions” problem. As explained at Science of Doom:
“- With even a minute uncertainty in the initial starting condition, the predictability of future states is very limited.
– Over a long time period the statistics of the system are well-defined.”

M Courtney: You are astonishingly, totally wrong about Spencer Weart’s “Discovery of Global Warming” ignored “the fundamental climatology made by [sic] Hubert Lamb.” Simply using the Search function in that book (not merely an article) instantly reveals a picture and description of his work: https://history.aip.org/climate/xLamb.htm

As a retired public school teacher I have some experience with the lack of real science education. In 2014 the year I retired only 51% of science teachers had science degree. I now live in Florida and know that in my county you can have a history degree and be teaching a science class. Unless we teach critical thinking and the scientific method how can we expect an outcome different that what we have.

This article is most uplifting to me and reinforcing of the idea that they can’t fog everybody, even after an unremitting blitz during K-12. Abraham Lincoln understood this.

I’ve expressed some thoughts about the imfamous 97%. Although I know that study was seriously Cooked, I do believe it is a huge percentage of people who don’t do any deep questioning and thinking. I hasten to add that this includes people of all political persuasions. University used to be a place where “followers” were at least exposed to questioning and rumination. Not anymore.

Reinforcement of the 97% idea, can be found in the brave few who, even more deeply brainwashed than today, were openly dissident under the ultra repressive Soviet regime. Adding to these the passively resistant and 3% may be a reasonable estimate of the naturally unbrainwashable population.

It’s facile to conflate sceptics with right wing politics and it is true there is a substantial political component on both sides, but the real sceptic is apolitical in his dissidence. “Followers”, who come to this site are exposed to information and interpretations not normally available to them and they come armed with official bullet points and insults when the going gets tough. However, I’ve seen some of these become more thoughtful.

Clair, it seems like UW has changed quite a bit since ’75-’78 when I too was in Petroleum Engineering there. I don’t remember having to put up with professors who pushed their agendas on the students. The closest I came to that was in communications class, one of my arts and parties electives, where the prof was trying to guess what our majors were. It was a summer class and as that short season is the only time you can wear tank tops, cut-offs, and sandals. When he got to me he tried three times to figure out my major but all were some liberal type arts and parties major. He didn’t want to believe me when I told him it was Petroleum Engineering. I guess I didn’t fit his idea of what an engineer should be. It might have been the shoulder length hair and beard the aided in the confusion.

I made to the bust in the mid-eighties, worked in construction for five years, and finally got on w/a state agency in a program remediating leaking underground storage tanks and dry cleaners. I have sort of come full circle since for the last nine years I have been at another agency where work is cleaning up abandoned oil field sites, and believe me there is no shortage of them. It is hard to believe what were acceptable practices in the past. Being in the environmental field over 25 years I have seen my fair share of enviros who don’t tolerate anyone who doesn’t accept what they believe in, be it AGW or fracing (their was no k in it when I was in the bidness). Most of the time it is a waste of time to try and make any point but not a waste of breath since the air we breathe out is ~40,000 ppm C02!

I hope you enjoy your remaining time there at UW. I will be over in Evanston the first week of October for my mother’s 90th. Looking forward to a little cool weather.

This reminds me of a fourth grade student many years ago, who was instructed to write a paper on the ozone hole. He got onto the internet and researched how ozone is made—by one set of UV rays, that it is an unstable chemical that naturally breaks down, faster where there’s higher humidity, and another set of UV rays also breaks it down. So what will you get over the poles during winter when there are no UV rays to create ozone?

The student came to me with his data saying “This doesn’t make sense.” He had been instructed to follow the Weekly Reader format telling how evil ClFlCs were destroying the ozone. Just then a couple of facts from Organic Chemistry Class (what was a philosophy major doing taking organic chemistry? Don’t ask.) popped into mind: Freon is a very heavy molecule, very unlikely to get into the stratosphere. Some of the strongest chemical bonds known are the lighter halides (chlorine and fluorine) and carbon, so strong in fact that they will even disassemble other molecules to bond to carbon. (That’s why chlorine is added to tap water, to kill little nasties.) To top it off, the atmospheric ozone was made the thinnest shortly after major volcanic eruptions injected megatons each of CO2, HCl and HFl into the ozone bearing stratosphere. Just follow the chemical reactions.

That boy gave a very different paper than what the teacher expected.

Today the young man is a software engineer—at least that still follows logic.

“Freon is a very heavy molecule, very unlikely to get into the stratosphere.”

Have we measured the amount of Freon in the stratosphere? Yes, about a much as at the surface per unit weight. Why is there just as much? The troposphere and stratosphere are mixed by convection faster than heavier molecules tend to sink and lighter ones rise. Above about 100 km, vertical convection is negligible and gases do start to fractionate by molecular weight.

“Some of the strongest chemical bonds known are the lighter halides (chlorine and fluorine) and carbon, so strong in fact that they will even disassemble other molecules to bond to carbon.”

C-F bonds are the strongest single bonds to carbon. C-Cl bonds are not usually strong or unreactive. They are the bonds broken by UV in the stratosphere that cause ozone depletion. In our strongly oxidizing atmosphere, C-H bonds are the most vulnerable bonds to reactive oxygen species. Unlike other organic gases, this makes chlorofluorocarbons inflammable (burning = reaction with oxygen). Today we use hydrofluorochlorocarbons (HCFC’s) which are relatively inflammable, but with a C-H that often oxidizes before reaching the stratosphere. Today, we have HFO (hydrofluoroolefins), which are not toxic, practically non-flammable, and have half life in the atmosphere of only 10 days – no ozone depletion or global warming potential.

” so strong in fact that they will even disassemble other molecules to bond to carbon.”

CFC’s are unreactive, so they don’t dissemble other molecules.

“That’s why chlorine is added to tap water, to kill little nasties.”

We add bleach (sodium or calcium hypochlorite) or chlorine gas to water to make HOCl (hypochlorous acid) with a very reactive O-Cl that chlorinates and thereby kills bacteria and viruses.

“So what will you get over the poles during winter when there are no UV rays to create ozone.”

No creation OR destruction of ozone when their is no UV during winter darkness.

Being able to think for yourself is a very important skill to learn. So is recognizing the LIMITATIONS of your own knowledge. The increasing disdain for experts in our society today is a sensible reaction the abuse of abuse of experts in politics – especially those whose experts who have abandoned traditional academic/scientific principles to achieve political goals. This doesn’t mean the experts are wrong. Moulina’s initial studies on ozone depletion were grossly wrong in magnitude, but the idea that chlorine radicals from CFC’s can destroy ozone in the stratosphere is correct. Since the ozone hole still appears every spring in Antarctica, I’ve look long and hard at the early data saying the ozone hole isn’t a natural phenomena. It sure looks like it first appeared in the 1970’s. Atmospheric levels of CFCs are still well above the 1970’s.

You didn’t get the part about raw materials and reactions in the upper atmosphere:

When major volcanoes erupt, they inject megatons each of the raw materials out of which freon or CFCs are made. Then natural reactions combine those raw materials into freon. There’s no need to posit that any freon wafted up from the earth’s surface to the stratosphere to account for the CFCs in the stratosphere.

There were two major volcanic eruptions after the 1970s, Pinatubo in the Philippians, and Raboul volcanoes. Each was violent enough to inject megatons each of the raw materials out of which CFCs are created. It wouldn’t surprise me if it takes decades for the results of those volcanic eruptions to precipitate out.

Ozone is an unstable molecule with a half-life measured from minutes to hours, depending on external conditions. So even without active destruction, ozone levels tend towards zero without continuous replenishment. Over the poles in the winter, when and where there’s no active replenishment, the ozone levels tend to thin out. Hence the “ozone hole”. It is at its thinnest near the end of winter.

The ozone hole was first measured in the 1970s because no one looked for it before then. It could have been there all along.

Freon was used in fire extinguishers for decades because it sinks even at the earth’s surface. That’s not the only example of heavier gases sinking even in the troposphere. Let alone before wafting up into the stratosphere.

Richard: Can you read, or does one thought stay stuck in your mind forever?

Saying CFC’s are denser than other gases in the atmosphere and therefore must sink to the lowest altitude is a rational thought. Let’s try an analogy. Take a bottle of vodka. Do the denser water molecules sink to the bottom? Of course not. On the other hand. you are correct that Freon fire extinguishers – and CO2 extinguishers – temporarily deposit a layer of denser gas near the surface. So, how does a sensible person decide if his rational thoughts are correct or not?

You read, and then try to understand the principle that applies. I provided you clear answers about measurement and rational. CFC’s haven’t sunk into the lower troposphere.

However, above 100 km, gases do begin to fractionate by molecular weight. Why? Because mixing by vertical convection occurs faster than settling under the force of gravity. (This also happens to explain why the thermogravity folks are wrong).

If you put your bottle of vodka in a high speed centrifuge and increase the force of gravity and speed of settling, you can probably separate the ethanol and water. Biologists make salt/density gradients using CsCl in water to separate molecules by buoyancy. Centrifuges are used to separate U-235 from U-238 in UF6 gas. But CFCs below the tropopause are relatively uniformly dispersed – because mixing is faster than settling.

Richard writes: “Each [volcano] was violent enough to inject megatons each of the raw materials out of which CFCs are created.”

Surely you are joking. CFCs don’t get made in the stratosphere. Nor are they present in volcanic gases. They don’t form in magma. Industrially, CFC-12 is made from CCl4 (man made) and HF and a strong Lewis acid. Scientists bring back samples of gas from the stratosphere which they analyze by GC/MS. Chlorine containing compounds are trivial to identify because the Cl-35/37 isotope pair. We know the majors source of Cl atoms in the stratosphere.

Richard: “The ozone hole was first measured in the 1970s because no one looked for it before then. It could have been there all along.”

Another great thought. We certainly didn’t have today’s satellites continuously monitoring every aspect of the formation of the ozone hole. Did you check out your great thought with Google Scholar and see if you are correct (as I did)? Or did you read it somewhere on the Internet alongside of an article John Podesta’s child sex ring at the Cosmic Ping Pong Pizzeria in Washington DC?

Oops wrong again! Ozone measurement were made at three different stations in Antarctica long before the ozone hole began to form.

The biggest problem with website like WUWT is so many poorly informed people repeat “common sense” or ignorance read elsewhere and repeat it over and over. As with John Podesta’s child sex ring at the Cosmic Ping Pong Pizzeria in Washington DC. Do you want WUWT to become a place where rumors like this one circulate? Aren’t you sick of trying to distinguish “fake news” from fact? Then think or even provide a link before you write.

Did I take any chemistry? Yes. In high school, college, grad school, post doc, and continued my education to this day as a professional. And you?

Though people traveled to the South Pole in the 19th Century, the first times folks stayed in the Antarctica was the 20th Century. Real scientific exploration, i.e., collecting data, etc, didn’t happen to any great extent until the 1950s. And ozone holes were not their primary or even secondary interest.

Your claims of having studied chemistry don’t sound plausible when you liken how water holds some molecules in solution to how gas molecules are distributed in the atmosphere. Even first year freshmen college students should be able to see flaws in that argument.

Your graphs conveniently start in 1992, after the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinetubo that injected megatons each of HFl, HCl, CO2, the raw materials that can be combined into CFCs + H2O, and other highly reactive compounds into the ozone bearing stratosphere. The reactions to create atmospheric CFCs wouldn’t happen all at once, but over a period of months to years.

Your arguments are coming across as those of a troll. Therefore I see no reason to continue this discussion.

My graphs showed that we know how to measure the amount of CFC in the lower atmosphere and stratosphere. It is insane to suggest CFC settle out of the stratosphere when we are measuring how much is present there.

Richard continued: after the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinetubo that injected megatons each of HFl, HCl, CO2, the raw materials that can be combined into CFCs + H2O, and other highly reactive compounds into the ozone bearing stratosphere. The reactions to create atmospheric CFCs wouldn’t happen all at once, but over a period of months to years.

There are no CFC is volcanic gases. Synthesis of CFCs in the stratosphere is extremely unlike. Fluorine is relatively rare in nature and natural fluorinated gases are unknown in nature. The sulfate aerosols left over from injection of SO2 into the stratosphere are gone in about 3 years. Water soluble gases like HCl are washed out much faster. If, by some miracle, a significant amount of CFC was injected into the atmosphere by volcanic eruption, it would have been causing an ozone hole before the 1970’s.

Figure 1 from this reference shows measurements of ozone over Antarctica at three sites beginning around 1960. According to all three sites (including the South Pole, there was no ozone hole back then. I tried to paste an image of Figure 1 above. I’ll try again. Otherwise click on the &&$$%* link. Or are you afraid of what you might learn?

The other phenomena I described showing that heavier molecules sink to the bottom of a liquid or a gas under some conditions but not others must be beyond your understanding. However, there is no excuse for not clicking on a link to the turbopause in wikipedia and reading that the atmosphere is homogeneous in the molecular weight of gases below the turbopause, but fractionates above. I could add that the average water molecule remains in the atmosphere for 9 days, at which point it condenses. Vertical convection in the troposphere is reasonably fast.

I sorry you feel I’m trolling. The Internet is littered with fake new and false information. I’m just doing my part to make sure that wrong information doesn’t spread from this site (which is important for opposing CAGW). When I began skeptical about climate change and the ozone hole wasn’t shrinking, I investigated to see if I had been fooled about CFCs and ozone depletion.

Edwin wrote: “Though people traveled to the South Pole in the 19th Century, the first times folks stayed in the Antarctica was the 20th Century. Real scientific exploration, i.e., collecting data, etc, didn’t happen to any great extent until the 1950s. And ozone holes were not their primary or even secondary interest.”

The ozone layer and its importance to protecting life from damaging UV first became apparent around 1930. For that reason, there are several sites around the globe at which ozone has been continuously measures dating back to 1930. (Think of it as being like Keeler’s CO2 record at Mauna Loa). However the production and destruction of ozone is a fairly complicated phenomena that depends on circulation of air through the stratosphere. That circulation is from the equator to the poles, where models thought ozone would be the lowest. For that reason, some scientists became interested in measuring ozone near both poles. The circulation today is called the Brewer-Dobson circulation. Dobson was the discoverer of the ozone layer and the Dobson unit of ozone is named after him.

At the same time, the beginning of the space age was also creating a great deal of interest in the upper atmosphere. The Van Allen radiation belt was discovered in 1958. An international geophysics year was held to promote scientific cooperation in exploring the upper atmosphere and the poles, among other subjects. Of course, no one knew that a “hole” in the ozone layer was going to appear a quarter-century later, but once the instrumentation was set up in the Antarctic, measurements continued at three permanent stations.

One of my favorite WUWT posts is where they looked to the homes of various climate change proponents to see if they used “green” solutions such as solar or wind. Most didn’t. I always chuckle when I walk by one of my neighbors, he’s a high muckily-muck with NCAR down here in Colorado. No wind turbine in his back yard or solar in his roof.

This was a very interesting read. I’m in a very similar situation. I’m 17, turning 18 on the 14th of this month. Many of the tactics you used at my age are fairly similar to what I do. I just bring up small, innocent enough questions. I know better than to try and start an argument. My goal is to pick at their brains and see how they react to certain “stimuli” (in this case, my various questions). My freshman year teacher was actually a “lukewarmer”, in that she accepted that CO2 has a warming effect but it’s influence is overstated. Ironically, she had some debates with my English teacher who was full on alarmist. Long story short, they strongly disagreed with eachother. I’m a senior now, and not much has changed between them. This is what truly got me thinking about the issue, as before I met my freshman science teacher I had assumed that Earth was just eventually doomed and I didn’t really question it.

“our professor began to talk about the chart as if it didn’t matter, something like ‘This trend suggests the opposite of what we know to be true. before moving on.” It is, unfortunately, hardly surprising.

As Dr. Tim Ball has often commented, it was Maurice Strong, a prominent Canadian socialist who took the lead in climate change politics. So every part of the dogma clearly shows its collectivist pedigree if you know and look for it.

It is with scant doubt behind today’s corrective about what is “the truth.” Friedrich A. Hayek, a Nobel Prize winning economist and former European socialist, explained it in “The Death of Truth,” Chapter 11 in his “Road to Serfdom,” paraphrasing:

Truth itself ceases to have its old meaning. It no longer describes how an individual, as sole judge of evidence, decides if it warrants belief based on experience and good conscience. Instead there is only the authorized “truth,” which must be accepted, even defended, in the interest of organized society’s unity (though it may need alteration as the social effort’s exigencies require).

Hayek, who had witnessed and recorded the rise of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, described how, when differing opinions about knowledge become political issues and solely the property of authority, a grim Orwellian anxiety emerges when the old evidentiary sense of what “truth” means is discarded, and replacing it brings a dispiriting cynicism from the loss of competitive independent inquiry and the disappearance of rational analysis and conviction.

For all of knowledge, differences of opinion become political issues for an authority alone to decide. Perhaps most alarming, Hayek adds, is that contempt for intellectual liberty does not wait for a completed totalitarian system. Socialist “truth,” he wrote is everywhere today among intellectuals who embrace, even if unconsciously, a collectivist faith and, by championing doctrinal purity, are acclaimed and rewarded as intellectual leaders even in still liberal countries.

The smartest, most knowledgeable students are shut down when they question the blatherings of the climate change cult.
Even formerly safe from propaganda engineering courses are now full of social justice and climate change nonsense.
This drives the best and brightest out, rather than leading to their acceptance of obvious agenda driven propaganda.
I saw this nonsense begin in the 70’s with the environmental movement’s acceptance of Rachel Carson’s ” Silent Spring” as documented fact.
I had biology professors back then that were no different than today’s climate change cultists. I called bullsh*t on Dr. Carson’s claims in class.
I was so annoyed by the obvious propaganda that I changed majors- went from wanting to be a wildlife biologist to a mechanical engineering major.
At that time none of the social justice nonsense was present in the engineering fields, and the enviro whackos weren’t present as professors in engineering depts.
This young lady’s story should be spread far and wide- maybe it can help stop this nonsense from driving more students out of science fields.

Not sure if you have ever heard of the Gell-Mann syndrome, but most people suffer from it, and it is the very thing you are noticing.

Describing Gell-Man is fairly simple, it is a sort of willful amnesia in the face of the unknown. If you are reading the newspaper, perusing the articles, you stumble across one where the journalist is talking about an event you actually experienced, or a topic of which you know a great deal. As you read the article you become angry and confused. They have mixed up cause and effect. The have misquoted, and misconstrued what happened. “Hrumph” you say, then immediately turn the page to an article about Afghan politics, a subject you know next to nothing about, and eagerly read on.

Now logically, this makes no sense. If the article where I know the facts about is wrong, why would I automatically assume the article where I personally don’t know the facts about, is right? Shouldn’t I be extra cautious of articles where I don’t have any information? Instead we are the opposite – more accepting.

We tend to overrate others expertise in things we know very little about. The mechanic at the shop telling me my flange is oscillating. Hey the guy is a mechanic, and he looked in the engine. he must know what he is talking about, right? Most people are very susceptible to herd thinking, of following authority. Very few want to think for themselves – very few want to ask dumb questions about a subject they are not familiar with. Who are you to question the status quo, the status quo, by the way, that most people simply accept without understanding? Try asking any catastrophic global warmer who the IPCC is and what “IPCC” even stands for sometime – be prepared for a lot of blank looks.

Anyway, you have learned a lot of valuable lessons in college. Don’t trust authority, especially authority that insists it is right simply because it is the authority. Also be very wary of scientific viewpoints that flatter your ego, or confirm your assumptions, or make you look better than someone else. Finally, if you can’t explain it, then you don’t really understand, it do you? You are just parroting something you heard, or something you read in the paper ;). The world would do a lot better, if more people were a bit more humble about things they know very little about.

Clair Masters wrote: “Some of my previously held beliefs have changed, like much of what I understood (or thought I understood) about climate, but I’ve still yet to be presented solid evidence for primary anthropogenic climate change that isn’t either refuted by another study, or backed with accusations like the ones crunchy granola guy lobbed my way.”

You have correct rejected the gross oversimplifications about CAGW that have been foisted on the public by scientists more interested in political advocacy than in scientist accuracy. However, it is possible to lean that certain aspects of AGW – radiative forcing, in particular – are reliable science. Radiative forcing plus conservation of energy demands that the earth warm in response to rising GHGs. If the Earth were a simple gray body it would warm about 1 degC in response to a doubling of CO2. However, the earth isn’t a simple gray body (with an absorptivity and emissivity that is constant with temperature), so we can’t say how much it will warm in practice. Feedbacks climate scientist’s names for temperature dependent changes in absorptivity and emissivity.

Unfortunately, the typical engineering education doesn’t involve two fields that are useful to understanding climate physics: quantum mechanics (the interactions between molecules and photons) and chaos. Chaotic fluctuations in fluid flow (ocean currents that exchange heat between the deep ocean and the surface) are responsible for large unforced or internal variation in surface temperature like El Nino that are not caused by radiative heat exchange with the sun and space. Given this chaotic evolution of surface temperature, it is very difficult to determine the cause of short term variations in our planet’s surface temperature – such as the fairly meaningless Pause in warming between about 2000 and 2013.

Since engineers deal with macroscopic materials, they usually don’t learn much about non-intuitive behavior of individual molecules and photons that results in the thermodynamics we observe. It turns out the individual molecules and photons don’t obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics; individual molecule have kinetic energy, but not a temperature that defines which way heat can flow. The field of statistical mechanics explains how the quantum behavior of large numbers of molecules results in the laws of thermodynamics of the macroscopic world. And the spectrum of blackbody radiation. Statistical mechanics is a highly mathematical subject of negligible utility to engineers who already need to take a heavy load of courses. That leaves no one to tells you blackbody radiation is the result of thermodynamics EQUILIBRIUM between radiation and molecules. In our atmosphere, some wavelengths of thermal IR are in equilibrium with the local atmosphere and some are not. So applying the principles of blackbody radiation to our planet doesn’t work very well. Another untaught concept is “local thermodynamic equilibrium” in the atmosphere, which ensures that the number of CO2 molecules in an excited vibrational state depends only on the local temperature, not the intensity of the radiation passing through the atmosphere. Collisional relaxation of excited states is vastly faster than re-emission of a photon from an excited state.

The point of you long comment is what? That engineers didn’t study physics or other science on the way to getting their engineering degree? That they are not capable of understanding quantum mechanics or Chaos theory? As for engineers only dealing with macroscopic material demonstrates only you misunderstanding of what some modern engineers now study and actually do.

Edwin: (I was rushed after writing much of my long comment.) Engineers are among those with a technical education who are best prepared by education to understand the physics of climate (change). Nevertheless, experience has taught me that there are certain topics engineering has not prepared them to deal with: DLR photons traveling from the cooler atmosphere to the warmer surface and “violating” the 2LoT. Local thermodynamic equilibrium (aka thermalization of absorbed photons). Assuming the atmosphere behaves like a gray body. Chaotic fluctuations in temperature. Our author may incorrectly believe that radiative forcing has been discredited for some of these reasons.

The fundamental equation of radiative transfer through the atmosphere, the Schwarzschild eqn., is not one dealt with in undergraduate courses – which usually stop with blackbody radiation.

dI = n*o*B(lambda,T)*dz – n*o*I_0*dz

It say that – for a given wavelength – the change in the intensity, dI, of radiation passing an incremental distance, dz, through the atmosphere depends on radiation added/emitted by gas molecules (the first term) and radiation removed/absorbed by gas molecules along the dz increment. n is the density of emitting/absorbing molecules (aka GHGs), o is their absorption cross-section at the wavelength of interest, I_0 is the intensity of radiation entering the dz increment and B(lambda,T) is the Planck function for that wavelength and local temperature.

Not necessarily.
If increased radiative forcing leads to an increase of the planet’s albedo (for example) then the temperature may even fall.
Or more likely it will be restricted from moving far.
This is the strange attractor theory; that the climate is chaotic. And if Lorenz is right then your simple linear equation is irrelevant.

M Courtney wrote: “If increased radiative forcing leads to an increase of the planet’s albedo (for example) then the temperature may even fall.”

Incorrect. Radiative forcing (the slowing of radiative cooling to space) has no direct effect on planetary albedo. It only changes albedo by first causing warming. The amount of warming caused by radiative forcing can be reduced by a temperature-dependent increase in albedo (a feedback) measured in W/m2/K, but the some warming is required.

M Courtney: You are correct that climate is chaotic. When you are discussing chaotic change (or unforced or change or fluctuations in heat transfer between the surface and the deep ocean), there need not be an apparent cause for change. However, it doesn’t mean that forced change can’t occur.

There is a wonderful short article from Lorenz about this subject entitled: Chaos, spontaneous climatic variations and detection of the greenhouse effect. It is found on page 445 of this conference proceedings. (Basically, it says you can’t attribute warming to GHGs using climate models if they have been tuned to the historical record.)

Good for you, Clair Masters. I note your points about water vapor. The consensus explanation, as you have heard, is that water vapor condenses out, resulting in a short turnover period in the atmosphere, and therefore massive human emissions of it (think evaporative heat rejection from coal-fired and nuclear power plant cooling towers) cannot cause warming from its radiative absorption and emission properties. This is half right, but misses the reason why the atmosphere returns water to the surface so readily. Keep asking, “Where does the heat go?” Precipitation makes it obvious that the atmosphere behaves powerfully as a heat engine, putting heat into motion at impressive rates. For example, on this website recently there was a posting of a 6.3″ per hour rainfall rate from NASA and NOAA sources for Hurricane Irma earlier in its development. That rate of condensation from the updrafts implies upward heat delivery of 100,000 W/m^2. Consider this question: “What does CO2 do to the effectiveness of air and water vapor as the working fluid of the atmospheric heat engine?” It’s a good question for an engineer to ask.

David Dibbell: You are executing a classic Gish Gallop: Changing the subject to distract from your being wrong. What does your paragraph have to do with water vapor being a feedback rather than a forcing of atmospheric temperature, and anthropogenic CO2 injection into the atmosphere being a driver?

David Dibbell, search the comments for Tom Dayton’s name and you will find he has repeatedly demonstrated a clear lack of understanding on atmospheric water vapour.

He’s actually stated that warmer air carries more water vapour (yes) and that therefore it cannot form clouds (no, temperature varies with altitude and merging of air masses. And, of course, nucleation is required to form clouds, which he doesn’t know).

My suspicion is that Skeptical Science hasn’t covered latent heat yet so he hasn’t even heard of that.
Anyone who links to Skeptical Science is providing a condemnation of the Arts syllabus.

M Courtney: Of course Skeptical Science deals with latent heat, as does all of climatology. You should read more and type less. Here is merely one example that took me all of 2 seconds to find by typing “latent heat” into the Search field on the Skeptical Science site: https://skepticalscience.com/tropospheric-hot-spot.htm

David Dibbell: You wrote that “the consensus explanation…is that water vapor condenses out, resulting in a short turnover period in the atmosphere, and therefore massive human emissions of it…cannot cause warming from its radiative absorption and emission properties,” is only “half right.” You were wrong about that being only half right. It is in fact completely right. Then you tried to distract from your incorrect assertion by throwing out a bunch of other things that are not in any way relevant to the original point of discussion.

Tom Dayton: Thank you for your response. You say, of the consensus view about water vapor, “It is in fact completely right.” Then I will direct to you the same question I posed in my original comment. When water vapor is emitted into the atmosphere by systems such as cooling towers, and condenses out as precipitation, where does the heat go?

(And just to be clear especially to others who read this, when I say “half right” I mean this: the conclusion that emissions of water vapor are harmless make sense to me, but for a different reason than argued from the climate consensus viewpoint. The real reason, as I see it, that these emissions are harmless is that the atmosphere operates so readily as a heat engine, using water vapor to help drive upward motion to deliver the heat to high altitudes unimpeded by the greenhouse effect.)

David Dibbell: The energy emitted by the condensation of water vapor that was emitted by cooling towers, of course goes into the atmosphere. It is the same amount of energy that was human-generated to evaporate the water in the first place. The amount of human-generated energy by that and all other means (“waste heat”) is nonzero but trivial in contrast to the long-term insulation increase from anthropogenic CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions: https://skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm.

Your reliance on a “heat engine” is incorrect. Directly injecting water vapor into the atmosphere has only a trivial and temporary effect, for the reasons I’ve repeatedly explained and provided evidence for; the water vapor quickly condenses out of the atmosphere.

I’m replying to my own comment here to close out the exchange with Mr. Dayton you can see below.

NASA described the heat-engine nature of the atmosphere (and the oceans for that matter) in a January 14, 2009 article on its Earthobservatory website, by Rebecca Lindsey, entitled “Climate and the Earth’s Energy Budget”. It’s still there. Here is a quote: “The atmosphere and ocean work non-stop to even out solar heating imbalances through evaporation of surface water, convection, rainfall, winds, and ocean
circulation. This coupled atmosphere and ocean circulation is known as Earth’s heat engine. The climate’s heat engine must not only redistribute solar heat from the equator toward the poles, but also from the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere back to space.”

Want to see the heat-engine nature of the atmosphere for yourself? Watch a thunderstorm.

Yes, David Dibbell. In other news, the sky is blue. All that is completely irrelevant to the fact that water vapor added to the atmosphere condenses out unless the atmosphere’s temperature is increased by other means.

Good thing she didn’t take gender studies, the whole things a fraud, even worse than eugenics. The whole of the social sciences is one reason fewer and fewer men than women are going to university. Economics is another corrupted science. Profs get the funded if they promote theories validating unbridled greed, the kind that gave us the 08 crash.

I wish Clair Masters was one of my students: She can write clearly and expressively. And she would like my classes in which I abjure my students to “Question Everything”. Many of them obviously have difficulty with that concept, poor dears.

Great to read about your “adventures” in college Clair, and keep doing what you’re doing. Also, as a trained electrical engineer, I’m glad to hear that your engineering classes are staying honest. Sciency beliefism like you’re getting in your non-engineering science classes don’t pay the bills in the real world, but engineering does, which is why they have to stick to the truth.

To “Clair Masters”: If you find the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis, and its adherents, to be zealots, then you may find the rest of the story to be quite fascinating. For there is not one argument about climate change, there are actually three…..

The 2nd argument is purely geological and independent of greenhouse gases. It involves the age of the present geologic epoch, the Holocene. Under natural boundary conditions how long should the Holocene be expected to last? The answer is anywhere from “it should already be over” to possibly as long as 50k years. The former estimate is derived from orbital dynamics obliquity and precession. The data suggests that no previous interglacial has sustained interglacial warmth much longer than about ~5,000 years from peak obliquity. Obliquity peaked in the Holocene about ~10,000 years ago. Many workers have published results suggesting that only 1 of the past 8 interglacials has lasted longer than about half a precession cycle. The precession cycle varies from 19,000 to 23,000 years and we are at the 23kyr point now, making 11,500 half. The Holocene is, as of this year, precisely 11,720 years old……..

The 3rd, and far more interesting debate stems from Ruddiman’s Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis (EAH), first published in 2002. The gist of the EAH is that we have either delayed or obfuscated glacial inception BECAUSE of our GHG emissions! Here are a few poignant quotes from the literature summing this up:

“We will illustrate our case with reference to a debate currently taking place in the circle of Quaternary climate scientists. The climate history of the past few million years is characterised by repeated transitions between `cold’ (glacial) and `warm’ (interglacial) climates. The first modern men were hunting mammoth during the last glacial era. This era culminated around 20,000 years ago [3] and then warmed rapidly. By 9,000 years ago climate was close to the modern one. The current interglacial, called the Holocene, should now be coming to an end, when compared to previous interglacials, yet clearly it is not. The debate is about when to expect the next glacial inception, setting aside human activities, which may well have perturbed natural cycles.”

Crucifix, M. and J. Rougier, 2009, “On the use of simple dynamical systems for climate predictions: A Bayesian prediction of the next glacial inception”, Published in Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Topics, 174, 11-31 (2009)http://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.3625.pdf

“The possible explanation as to why we are still in an interglacial relates to the early anthropogenic hypothesis of Ruddiman (2003, 2005). According to that hypothesis, the anomalous increase of CO2 and CH4 concentrations in the atmosphere as observed in mid- to late Holocene ice-cores results from anthropogenic deforestation and rice irrigation, which started in the early Neolithic at 8000 and 5000 yr BP, respectively. Ruddiman proposes that these early human greenhouse gas emissions prevented the inception of an overdue glacial that otherwise would have already started.”

So there you have what might just be the most ironical thing in all of human history! The Anthropocene being the GHG extension of Holocene interglacial warmth until we decide to pull the plug in preference of a ~100,000 year long ice age instead.

William McClenney: 50k years, 5,000 years, 10,000 years, 19,000 years, 23,000 years … Climate change on the orbital forcing time scale is irrelevant to anyone alive today. AGW is a problem for the next century or perhaps two. It is tough enough to decide what to do about the next century or two. If we haven’t learned how to manipulate our climate within a millennium, we will probably be dealing with much worse problems than a coming ice age.

William: You miss my point. Orbital forcing changes on the thousand year time scale. Without rising GHGs, we might be entering the next ice age right now. However, that is irrelevant, since it will take perhaps a thousand year to cause 1 degC of cooling. AGW is about roughly 1 degC of warming in the past century and a minimum of 1 degC in the next century – possibly more. That will overwhelm the oncoming ice age.

Even worse, our understanding of orbital forcing is so poor, that no theoretical framework properly hindcasts the glacial/interglacial changes we have experience. We can’t know if the next ice age was supposed to start this century, about 10 millennia in the past (if it weren’t for human agriculture) or 10 millennia in the future.

The issue of how fast glacial inception can occur is one I have been looking at for some time now. While it is obviously related to insolation changes precipitated by orbital frequencies, it is non-linear and seemingly related to changes in such things as oceanic circulation changes, albedo etc. Some useful guidance on speed of glacial inception from the literature seem to suggest that:

“According to the marine records, the Eemian interglacial ended with a rapid cooling event about 110 000 years ago (e.g., Imbrie et al., 1984; Frenzel and Bludau, 1987; Martinson et al., 1987), which also shows up in ice cores and pollen records from across Eurasia. Adkins et al. (1997) suggested that the final cooling event took less than 400 years, and it might have been much more rapid.”

“MIS-5e ended abruptly with a rapid transition to glacial conditions, the lake was covered by a layer of firnified snow and ice, and phototrophic biological activity ceased for a period of c. 90,000 years.”

“Our results suggest that MIS5e was not a stable period as there are two distinct periods of elevated organic and carbonate carbon deposition (Fig. 2b). We speculate that these were short-lived warm periods. Two warm periods (130.7–130 and 125.7–118.2 kyr BP) have also been detected in Austrian alpine stalagmites (Holzka¨mper et al., 2004). Until there is an appropriate technology for dating MIS5e in these lake sediments we cannot establish if there is a common forcing behind these warm events. The transition from interglacial into glacial conditions was rapid and is represented in its entirety between 26 and 23 cm. This suggests that the end of MIS5e was a relatively sudden event and not a gradual transition to colder conditions. Alkenone sea surface temperature data from the Southern Ocean record this sharp cooling at around 120 kyr BP (Ikehara et al., 1997), marine cores from the Atlantic suggest that it occurred over a period of less than 400 yr, and possibly much shorter (Adkins et al., 1997), and in Greenland the transition took as little as 70 yr (Anklin et al., 1993).”

“The transition into glacial conditions was a relatively sudden event. This is supported by marine and ice core records.”

Finally, the very abrupt end of the LI, that occurred within no more than 0.15 ka (Fig. 3b), but that lagged by ~6.3 ka the onset of long-term decreases in SST, Vostok dD and CH4 and increase in global ice volume, once again indicates a nonlinear response and suggests important threshold processes.

“Furthermore, astronomical calculations (Berger, 1978) show that the insolation values underwent much wider variations at high latitudes than at mid-latitudes during the Quaternary. Therefore, the astronomical forcing on climate (and vegetation) might be less at the latitude of the presently discussed pollen records in comparison to the marine record. The North Atlantic Ocean circulation, which directly influences the climate of Europe (Broecker et al., 1989), shows also that sea surface temperatures and salinity are subject to far stronger changes at high latitudes than at lower latitudes (Keigwin et al., 1994).”

“The result of these high resolution climate reconstructions is the discovery of a rapid (human scale) and significant cooling event within the Eemian interglacial.”

“Data from a core on the Bermuda rise, located at the mixing zone of North and South Atlantic deep water, show a pronounced decline of the North Atlantic deep-water component at the MIS 5e to 5d transition within a period of ~200 yr (Lehman et al., 2002).”

“Relatively few marine or terrestrial paleoclimate studies have focused on glacial inception, the transition from an interglacial to a glacial climate state. As a result, neither the timing and structure of glacial inception nor the spatial pattern of glacial inception in different parts of the world is well known.”

“But relatively few paleoclimate studies have focused on the details of the other transition between climate states – glacial inception. The relative age of the most recent glacial inception, about 120 ka, is likely a factor since far fewer high-resolution archives of climate, either marine or terrestrial, extend so far back in time.”

No interglacial has lasted as short a time as the 6000 years from the start of the Holocene to the end of its Climatic Optimum.

In the past 800 thousand years, there have been two integlacials as brief as 9000 years, but most are much longer. The last one, the Eemian, lasted 16,000 years and was much warmer than the Holocene. The interglacial during MIS 11 was even longer and hotter.

So there is no reason whatsoever to imagine that human activity 5000 years ago and more forestalled a return to glacial conditions.

Frank,

No, we would not be entering the next ice age right now without man-made GHGs. In the first place, they have had no detectable effect on GASTA. In the second place, based upon the tilt cycle, we have about 3000 more years to go in this interglacial. If eccentricity rules instead, then it’s more like 30,000 years, for a super interglacial akin to MIS 11.

“Ruddiman’s hypothesis is ridiculous.” One must presume that you have references to document your assertion but that you choose not to provide them. Might I suggest Ruddiman et al’s (2016) thorough analysis of the subject. Now, I do not want to do all of your research for you, so you will have to look this one up yourself (for practice) (hint: AGU).

Your assertion of the length of the Eemian was equally well documented. A lot of that depends on just what proxies one uses to provide the estimate. Using your methodology, off the top of my head (not taking the time to consult my exhaustive literature archives) the estimates run from roughly 9,000 to 23,000 years. From memory the consensus seems to be about 11,000 years.

You are correct about MIS-11. It was both longer and warmer than the Holocene. However not for the entire length of the extended interglacial. It consisted of two precession driven insolation peaks, with very cold conditions in-between.

One of the many papers you may wish to consult regarding MIS-11 is a landmark one by Lisiecki and Raymo (2005):

“Recent research has focused on MIS 11 as a possible analog for the present interglacial [e.g., Loutre and Berger, 2003; EPICA community members, 2004] because both occur during times of low eccentricity. The LR04 age model establishes that MIS 11 spans two precession cycles, with 18O values below 3.6 o/oo for 20 kyr, from 398-418 ka. In comparison, stages 9 and 5 remained below 3.6 o/oo for 13 and 12 kyr, respectively, and the Holocene interglacial has lasted 11 kyr so far. In the LR04 age model, the average LSR of 29 sites is the same from 398-418 ka as from 250-650 ka; consequently, stage 11 is unlikely to be artificially stretched. However, the June 21 insolation minimum at 65N during MIS 11 is only 489 W/m2, much less pronounced than the present minimum of 474 W/m2. In addition, current insolation values are not predicted to return to the high values of late MIS 11 for another 65 kyr. We propose that this effectively precludes a ‘double precession-cycle’ interglacial [e.g., Raymo, 1997] in the Holocene without human influence.”

A friendly piece of advice. If you are going to issue unsupported/unreferenced assertions then you may wish to consider how that affects your credibility, especially here on WUWT. It takes little time to eviscerate such assumptions.

The phrase, “Toe the party line,” was overused long before its overuse migrated to the internet. In 1946 George Orwell himself wrote against it as an example of “worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.”

“Toe the line is actually the survivor of a set of phrases that were common …”

Clair’s usage is not uncommon. As an editor, one should correct it (or ask that it be), but for a blog essay — I do not find it “Very, very, disappointing…”
I do find disappointing the double “very, very” — as I think one would be sufficient, and none would be better. “Omit needless words” is good advice.

– – – – – –Thanks, Clair, for the essay.
There are many interesting blog posts back in 2008 through 2012.
It takes much reading to go back and move forward. “The Air Vent” and “Climate Audit” come to mind. See the sidebar under Skeptical Views. Many others.
To add to the puns (schist, gneiss,…):
I love science puns but only periodically.

44 years ago when I was 16 a local radio talk show had a Friday night theme where a guest (Honest Chuck) joined the host (Ronn Owens on KGO radio) to do a few hours of Now Is That True? The idea was simple, callers would tell stories and Ronn and Chuck had to guess if they were true or false. If they were right they’d go on to the next caller, but if they were wrong they had to tell a story and the caller got to guess.

What was great about this show is how well it taught you critical thinking. Was the premise plausible? Was there convincing evidence? Did the teller relate it without verbal mistakes? Was all the information shared consistent? Etc. I found this show incredibly entertaining and a life lesson I have used ever since.

No matter what you are told ask yourself Now Is That True, rigorously consider the data, and value logic over emotion. After all, it worked for Spock : )

Some reflections
Although some of the objections the author has to manmade global warming is easily explained, and in no conflict with the IPCC explanation, I think the description of an education system hostile to questions about climate science is horrific. It shows how polarized the debate gas become.

Too many people think that people on the other side either are complete idiots or in some way corrupt. The reasoning seem to be like “If you do not agree with me, and you are not an idiot, you must have an economic benefit from what you are saying and therefore you are an evil person.”

Universities should be the opposite to that kind of reasoning. They should encourage students to ask questions and challenge the established beliefs.

When I was student, I financed some of the studies by being part time teacher in mathematics for ship electricians. Many of these sailor students where older than me, and they sometimes asked critical questions like “Why are we learning this?”. We then had challenging and interesting discussions. I would never dream of becoming angry for a critical question.

THANK YOU SO MUCH ANTHONY – IM A SCIENCE TEACHER AND HAVE COPPED SO MUCH ABUSE FROM STUDENTS AND TEACHERS ALIKE FOR DARING TO SHOW THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS DEBATE – THIS REFRESHING AND HAS MAKE MY DAY!!!

Compared to this incredibly learned person who wrote this piece and other brilliant people who know so much more than I do, I will simply concede I’m a complete idiot in comparison, and the fact that our local climate records show that the most recent 25 years, (in Central Minnesota) was actually one tenth of a degree colder than the the period of 1900 to 1924, just shows how ignorant I am. Actual climate records are obviously corrupt, since they don’t agree with Al Gore and his groupies….Just saying, And God knows we never had a hurricane till….NOW LOL

Clair, It is a shame that you have been treated badly by people who disagree with you.

All I would say is be careful that you don’t swap one group of ideological warriors for another. It is easy to reject people who treat you badly because of what you think, but you have to be careful that you don’t fall into replacing them with people who have the same issues, who seem to treat you better because they perceive you as being on the same side.

The real test is how they treat other people who disagree with them. As you will see from reading this site, and this thread discussing your letter, that while there are many knowledgeable people here, who are serious about understanding things, and who can ague in good faith, and with respect when talking to people they disagree with, there are also many who behave like the people who have given you a hard time.

You can’t let your skeptical guard down, and I would say that this is especially important in a setting where you and a great many others share common views. Keep your skeptical hat on, and be cautious of ideological cheer squads, whatever their position on the issues.

Clair, apparently your interest in the topic of climate change is deeper and more detailed than can be satisfied by the classes you have taken that treat climate change only as one of many subjects. I suggest that you simply take one actual climatology class, because that will be able to answer all your questions, and accurately. If you don’t want to take a class, why not read an introductory climatology textbook? Here is one aimed at people who want only an introduction and who have minimal technical background: David Archer’s “Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast”: http://forecast.uchicago.edu/

1. Why is the *pattern* of CO2 lagging temperature referred to as a “trend”? A trend is a monotonic change over some period of time time. Two oscillating variables don’t constitute a trend. I do not think that word means what she thinks it means.

2, What happens to water vapor exhausted from a fuel cell vehicle? Does it cause a long-term increase in average global humidity? Or does it condense out? How long will it take for H2O in the atmosphere to double from fuel cell exhaust, if all cars switched to hydrogen fuel cells? Is this shorter than, the same as, longer than, or much-much-much-much longer than the 130 years or so that it will take CO2 to double at current rates? Fossil fuels consist of hydrocarbons. What happens to the “hydro” part of the hydrocarbon when you burn them?

Sorry, Clair, you need to spend more time getting that “scientific background” you boast of.

You will notice that she raised the water vapour question as a schoolgirl.
This puts you in rather an awkward position.
Are you:
A) Picking a fight with a child’s viewpoint?
Or:
B) Failing reading comprehension?

It appears I am only one who red this letter in a way that most if not all of other commentators did not.
May be there is more to Miss Masters than what was my first impression, reason why I red some paragraphs second time. I even asked a question about the most contentious one. May be it is my background that make me look for the purpose behind the context of a ‘conversation’.

Reading this was like deja vu all over again. Similar to my experiences a few generations earlier, when we were being told the globe was cooling due to industrial activity, and all the oil would be gone by 1985, DDT had created a Silent Spring, and the population explosion would result in mass famine.

The good news is, the overreaction and failed hype results in a new generation of skeptics. Once they move on, the process begins all over again. But, maybe, this time, the enhanced collective memory provided by the internet will help dampen the next sky-is-falling epidemic.

Readers, You will find that the pseudoscience blog Tom Dayton linked to tries to excuse the observation that warming drives CO2 by claiming that, once it starts, the CO2 takes over.
Ignoring the fact that there are no stated uncertainties in the dating measurements from the ice cores (for the sake of argument – it isn’t a science blog after all)…
Three points:
1) If CO2 takes over, why did it stop? Has all the warming from CO2 already occurred? This would fit with Beer-Lambert’s Law but it doesn’t fit with the AGW hypothesis.

Unfortunately for the fate of the world, Skeptical Science haven’t quite disproven AGW yet because:
2) The effects of wobble sin the orbit are not the only variation. If CO2 takes over form one then it ought to take over from everything. From a spate of volcanoes cooling the skies to, conversely, a quiet tectonic period causing this runaway global warming again. Yet the record is quite clear. The phantom tipping points have never occurred. Therefore we cannot expect then to occur from water vapour amplification this time either.

But this is just probability. Have we no evidence? Yes, we do. It’s the Tropical Hotspot.
3) The tropical hotspot is an hypothesised warmer part of the atmosphere over the tropics. As water vapour amplification is meant to happen from any warming it should happen in the tropics relative to temperate zones. This hotspot was on the cover of the IPCC AR3. It was the physical evidence that would be found to prove that AGW was dangerous.
But when it was looked for, it wasn’t there.

M Courtney: I guess you could not be bothered to read that Skeptical Science article past Figure 1. Figures 2 and 3 have error bars. You are wildly incorrect in asserting that the Skeptical Science article claims “warming drives CO2 by claiming that, once it starts, the CO2 takes over.” Absolutely not; again, I can’t decide if you are purposely misstating what that article says, or have really, really poor reading comprehension, or are just lazy, or have no interest in the truth but only in provoking reactions from sensible people.

CO2 increase in the atmosphere CAN be a positive feedback to warming from other causes, IF warming of the ocean is sufficient, AND there is no overwhelming increase in atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 from other sources. CO2 or anything else being a positive feedback does NOT mean that warming feedback will run away (https://skepticalscience.com/positive-feedback-runaway-warming.htm; read the Basic, then Intermediate, then Advanced tabbed panes). Milankovich cycles trigger both glacial periods and interglacial periods, and CO2 levels respond as feedbacks in both cases: https://skepticalscience.com/Milankovitch.html

you ask any uni student what there thoughts are there mostly all been brain washed by left wing teachers i feel sad for them as they where also brain washed into global warming when they went to school

I liked your essay. I suggest that you read my investigation of an entirely new and different analysis of the atmosphere and climate change. You might pick up the baton and enjoy running a challenging course.